Misplaced Memories
by Pough
Summary: When Ziva is injured, Tony must examine his feelings about her.  During her recovery, the examination continues.  A Tiva-fic, to be sure.
1. Chapter 1

This is my first foray into true Tiva-fic. There were some who thought my last story, "The Impractical Heart," verged on Tiva, but I still maintain it was about their friendship, a very complex, resilient friendship. This story is flat-out Tiva.

A couple of things:

This is a "what if" fic, not a "let's make this medically plausible" fic. I did minimal research, so if you are a neurologist or know anything about neurology, I ask your forgiveness preemptively.

It will only be seven chapters long. It is entirely worked out, and I have written five of seven chapters. Technically, it is a WIP, but I have a goal to finish it this week while I'm on vacation.

I do not own any bit of the NCIS machine, empire or properties. Please don't sue me.

I hope you enjoy this frivolous journey into my strange psyche.

Tony DiNozzo danced into the bullpen, dropped his backpack onto the ground in his cubicle, and continued singing. "Oh, I'm being followed by a moon shadow. Moooooon shadow, moon shadow." Tim glanced up from his computer to share a look with Ziva, who simply sat with her head in her hands. "Leaping and hopping on a moon shadow. Moooo-Here's a question for you, McJetPack, how does one leap and hop on a moon shadow?"

"Why the fascination with songs from the seventies, Tony?" Tim asked, fingering through an old file.

"Oh, I guess you could say the Cat has my tongue today," Tony answered, sitting down. He pulled himself into his desk, yanked smooth his suit coat, and laid eyes on Ziva. "Speaking of cats, which one dragged you in this morning, Maude?"

Ziva's hands slid to her neck. Her eyes remained closed. "Yusuf Islam."

"You're dating someone named Yusuf Islam?" Tony asked, to which, in response, Ziva moaned. "I don't follow, moon shadow."

"Yusuf Islam," Ziva said, rubbing her fingers across her forehead. "Cat Stevens changed his name to Yusuf Islam. It is Yusuf Islam."

"I got that," Tony said, stepping from behind his desk, never taking his narrowed focus off Ziva. "You feeling okay?"

She thought she should stare him down and shut him up, but whenever she did, the room tilted and twirled. "I am...fine."

"Yeah, you look it." Tony balanced himself on the edge of her desk, and continued with the questions. "So what is it? Hangover? The flu? Common cold? You're not...pregnant, are you?"

"Whatever it is, Tony, you are making it worse," she said, covering her eyes with her hand.

"Pregnancy-insinuations aside," he said, rising from his perch. He pivoted her chair to face him, and said, "I'm serious. What's wrong?"

Ziva took a deep breath, and when her eyes fluttered open, she gave it her all to pacify him. "It is nothing. I have... Yes, I have a headache."

"A migraine? Do you have a migraine? This looks like a migraine. Not that I get migraines," Tony said, examining her eyes for any signs, not terribly sure if he'd know one from her symptoms. "DiNozzos don't get migraines."

"Only hemorrhoids," Tim reminded him.

"I told you that in private," Tony growled back over his shoulder. "And, by the way, I wonder how I got those, ya pain in the... Dammit, Probie! What's the matter with you?"

"This is not helping," Ziva said, trying to turn her chair, but Tony stopped her. She sucked in her upper lip, shook her head, which turned out to be a bad idea, and said, "It is probably nothing, but...this morning, in the shower, I passed out. I think."

"You passed out?"

"I think."

"You think?"

"One minute, I was shaving my legs, and the next, I woke up in the shower. I...I think I passed out, although I cannot be sure," she said, elbowing his hand off her chair, causing him to almost tumble over. "Now, if you don't mind, I have work to do."

Having heard the disconcerting element of her story, Tim moved from behind his desk and joined Tony. "You think? You don't remember?"

Her eyes flew from Tim's to Tony's, who was now in a squat in front of her. "It is nothing, I'm sure. I simply cannot remember." Tony peered into her wide eyes, his scrutiny discomforting her. What could he be looking for? How bad did she look? she wondered. She didn't want an answer to either question, truthfully, so she began to turn away from him. "This is ridiculous. I have-" But in a flash, Tony's hands were on her face, her scalp, her neck.

"Is it possible that you fell?" he asked, brushing back her hair.

"I...I don't... I am unsure," she said, searching his eyes that were not looking into hers, but scanning her hairline, her neck.

"But your head, it hurts, right?"

"This is foolish."

"Where does it hurt, Ziva?" he asked, palpating her skull, his fingers skittering over the area.

"I am fine," she sighed, but he was relentless.

Tony gathered her hair and combed it behind her left ear. Raising to the level of her temples, peering inside her ear, Tony found a tiny pool of blood. "Tim." McGee leaned over, and Tony made room for him to see the evidence of something more than just passing out.

"Uh, Ziva," Tim said, lowering himself next to Tony, "do me a favor-I'm going to say a list of items, and I want you to repeat them to me."

The insistence and seriousness in his tone and in his countenance frightened her, and she said, "Why?"

"Humor me."

Tony, meanwhile, continued to examine her scalp, until, with a wince from Ziva, he found the tender spot. "Rule number 58, Agent David: Never shower alone. Or, it _should _be Rule 58," he said, trying to estimate the size of the swelling without causing her added pain. "Got a big ol' goose egg, there, missy."

"Ready?" Tim asked. "Car, orange, dog, month."

Ziva closed her eyes, and Tony stood up, straightening his suit coat, his tie, without ever taking his focus off Ziva. She looked pale, he thought. Pale and shaken.

"Do you need me to repeat them?" Tim asked.

Ziva took in a deep breath, and labored through the list. "Car. Orange. Month. Orange."

Tony glanced at Tim, and then patted Ziva's back, and said, "Why don't you and I take a little trip to the ER?"

"Stop it," she said, swatting his hands away. "I am fine."

"As much as it pains me to say this, Ziva," Tim added, "Tony's right. You need to get that checked out."

Ziva set her jaw, glared at Tony, and asked, "Why?"

Tony said, "I think you have a concussion."

"Since when did you become a physician?"

"That's a good point," he said, chuckling. "And that's why you need to go the ER, where there _are_ doctors who know exactly what a concussion looks like."

"Do I not have a say in this?"

Tony bent over and grabbed Ziva's satchel from next to her desk, then offered his hand to her. "Tell you what-if you don't have a concussion, you can buy me lunch."

"Wait," Ziva said, finding herself being lifted from her chair by both Tim and Tony. And she did stand, because, truth be told, she was too tired to fight him. "What? Where are we going?"

Tony threw her satchel over his shoulder and wrapped his arm across her back. "Tell our contestant where she's going, McGee!"

"Buh, I would say...Georgetown University Hospital would be closest," Tim said, nodding.

"Georgetown it is," Tony said, carefully ushering her out from behind her desk. She reached to open her drawer to retrieve her gun and badge, but Tony stopped her. "I don't think you're gonna need those." When her shoulder drooped, when she seemed to lose her hold on vertical, Tony increased his hold on her. "Ya all right, there, Ziva?"

She pressed a hand to her forehead, and whispered, "Perhaps we should go."

Tony slid his hand into hers and helped her move through the office. "McGee, tell Gibbs-"

"Got it," Tim said, wondering if he should accompany them, at least to the car. "I'll tell him you took Ziva to the ER."

Punching the button on the elevator, Tony called back, "Yeah, that was probably better than what I was going to say."

"Which was what?"

"That the contractions were three minutes apart," Tony offered, just as the elevator doors slid open. "Ready, honey?"

"Tony..." she warned, and yet found greater purchase on his hand.

**They talked the whole way**. Well, he talked, and she listened. Until she became too tired to listen, then she closed her eyes and rested. Then, Tony became concerned and called out her name, yelled her name, pinched her, tapped her, yelled out her name again, and broke any number of traffic rules to expedite their trip. They finally reached the hospital, squealing tires, and she was half-conscious, hardly responsive at all, and when Tony cried out "We got an injured federal agent here!" the security guard rushed to get a gurney. The doors to the ER bay opened with a great whoosh, and in a moment, Ziva was taken one way and Tony another.

There were questions asked and paperwork to fill out, and all the while, Tony's mind stayed with Ziva, and her bag stayed on his shoulder.

Thirty-five minutes. That's all it took for a nurse to come charging out of triage to find him. She led him by the arm to a family consultation room and tried to talk to him slowly, but there just wasn't time for much explanation. "We need a signature. You are listed as one of her emergency contacts. Will you sign for her?"

He knew he was staring at her, but it was all just so incomprehensible. "What?" His fingers dug more deeply into the leather bag he had propped in his lap, Ziva's bag.

"Mr. DiNozzo, we need to operate now," she said, shoving the clipboard closer to him, practically wrapping his fingers around the pen. "I just need your signature."

One blink, and the world and his brain synchronized again. He scribbled his name on the form, here, here, and here, and she was gone. Tony watched the door swing shut behind her, and wondered if he was supposed to stay in the room or leave. How long was it supposed to take? he wondered. Had she said that? What else had he missed? Tony spooled back the conversation. Part of his brain was on recall duty, the other on suppression of panic duty. He wrapped his arms around Ziva's bag and wondered if there was anything in it she would need.

So when his phone rang, once, twice, Tony didn't immediately hear it. After the third ring, he pressed the button and couldn't remember what came next.

"DiNozzo? You there?" asked Gibbs.

Tony lowered his head, balanced the bag in his lap, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yeah, Boss."

"What's the latest?"

How could he tell him when Tony wasn't sure what had just happened? And as he rubbed his fingers across his tense brow, he realized he was numb.

"Tony?"

His head shot up, his eyes wide. He took a deep breath. He had to get ahold of himself. Tony slung the satchel over his shoulder, and said, "She's in surgery. They took her into surgery."

"What?"

Tony slammed shut his eyes. Think. Think! "Um, something about bleeding in her brain. It's not good, Boss."

"I'm on my way," was the last thing Tony heard, and something inside him said he could end the call.


	2. Chapter 2

Thank you for all your wonderful reviews. For some reason, I am unable to respond to them; I keep getting an error statement. Please know that I have read each and every one and am very grateful. BTW, no, I'm not going to kill off Ziva or anyone else, so rest easy. I'm right on target to have this entire story posted within a week or two, stringing it along for funsies.

Be well. Enjoy, and thank you once again.

NCISNCISNCISNCISNCISNCIS

**After the initial questions when they first arrived-_How was she on the way over? What happened when you arrived? How did she look? What did they say?_-his friends pretty much left Tony alone.**

Abby had put a sandwich in Tony's hand at some point, told him to eat, and he did. At least he thought he did. Tim tried to convince him that he could put her bag down, that he didn't need to carry it with him. Tony just stared at him, through him, and then at the doors that led to the recovery ward. Gibbs would walk over now and again and squeeze his shoulder, which was odd, but seemed to help. And although Ducky was on vacation, he would call in every hour or so to find out if anything had changed. It hadn't.

For the most part, Tony stared through the slits of windows in the double doors. Stared into the whiteness of the recovery area, where people passed in and out of his line of vision. He stood, silent as grief, and wondered if she were dead or alive; bleeding out, or hanging on; if he could have done something differently, gotten her to the hospital sooner, called an ambulance instead of having driven her. But mostly, was she alive?

It was noon before a nurse ushered Tony and the others into a consultation room and told them the neurosurgeon would be in soon. Twelve-fifteen before the surgeon actually showed up. And at twelve-twenty-five, she was gone.

Stunned, silent. Gibbs sat hunched over his knees, his hand plastered across his mouth. Tim's hands puddled in his lap, his mouth agape. Tony stood where he had when he first entered the room, his hand strangling the single, leather strap of her bag. He stared, frowning at the door the nurse and now the neurosurgeon had exited through, and what bothered him most, what really irked him was that on the other side of that damn door was Ziva, and the closed door meant he couldn't be with her.

A hand slipped into his, and Tony glanced sidelong at Abby, who laid her red-rimmed, green eyes on him, one corner of her lip tucked between her teeth.

Still, the door. No windows in this room. A strange purgatory between the healthy world and the sick world. What had the surgeon told him? What was beyond that door waiting for him? How had his world-had _Ziva's_ world just changed?

"You okay?" Abby asked, hooking her chin on his shoulder.

And still he stared at the door. "They always tell me if I can leave, but I never remember what they say." His sad eyes were suddenly upon her, and she felt her own sorrow renewed. "Do we have to stay here? What...what did the doctor say about...staying in this room?"

"No," Gibbs said, barely able to produce sound, so he cleared his throat, and stood up. "No, we don't. Come on." He touched Tony's back with a whisper of a hand, and Tony turned to leave. Abby and Tim followed in silence.

**At three in the afternoon, while Abby and Gibbs were downstairs fetching coffee and Caf-Pow, **a woman in a plain, dark-blue suit walked through the waiting room, looking at the faces of the people seated, asking a question, inaudible to Tony. When she moved closer, he heard the woman attempt his partner's name- "Family of Zih-va Day-vid?"

"That's Ziva David," Tony said, turning from the door. "Ziva, not Zih-va."

"I have her personal belongings," the woman said, cupping the back of Tony's arm. "If you'd come with me, I'll need you to sign for them."

"I have her bag," Tony said, pulling it from his shoulder. "Does she need this?"

"I don't think so," the woman told him, leading him to a side table. She plunked a stuffed, plastic bag on the table, opened it, and pulled out a smaller, clear bag. Assorted change, Ziva's ID badge, her cell phone, her necklace, earrings, one gold ring, and one barrette. "I think I have everything written down. Her clothes are in here, as well. Those, you'll see, are listed... here."

Tony stared at the necklace. Ziva never took it off. Ever. He ground his teeth together and closed his eyes.

"Sir?"

"Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo," he told her, opening his eyes to find he was still staring at her necklace.

"Agent DiNozzo, will you sign for these?"

Tony wrote his name on her sheet, and she might have thanked him, he didn't know. He opened the clear bag, brushed his finger over the picture on her badge, and fished her necklace out of the corner. Tony dribbled the chain into his palm, careful not to cover the charm-a small, inconspicuous Star of David. He touched the chain, gently smoothed it over the entire surface of his hand, centered the charm, and closed his hand. He brought his closed fist to his lips, and still he stared at those doors.

"Uh, Tony," Tim said, stepping near him, speaking quietly, "I hate to do this, but I gotta go to the Navy yard. I promise I'll come back as soon as I'm finished. Can I bring you anything?"

Tony rubbed his thumb across his tight lower lip and breathed into the hollow of his fist, onto her necklace. And then he realized Tim was standing next to him. Had he said something to Tony? His eyes skittered across Tim's features. "What?"

"I gotta go," Tim said, nodding, willing Tony to understand. "I'll be back. I'll stop by your apartment and bring you a change of clothes."

"She was talking to us before we left, McGee," Tony suddenly said, staring at Tim with a ferocity. "She was clear. She was present. Sure, she was in pain and her memory was a little wonky, but... And now... Now she's lying in a bed somewhere in there, with a couple holes in her skull, and they tell me only time will tell if she can talk, if she can move. If she can even remember who I... They use words like temporal lobes, language center, Glasgow's Coma Scale, acute subdural hematoma like they somehow take away the sting. Like their jargon makes it all right. Makes it scientific. Clean. They're never straight-up about it, that she had a balloon of blood pressed into her brain, suffocating and destroying whole sections of her memory. All because she fell while shaving her legs. Now, you tell me, McGee, how the hell that makes any sense."

"I can't, Tony," Tim said, rattled by Tony's percussive denunciation of the day.

"No, you can't," Tony said. His glare went back to the doors, and Tim saw the veins in his neck and temple bulge against his skin, watched the muscles in his jaw rumble. "No one can, because it doesn't make sense."

Tim frowned, forlorn at Tony's obvious distress. He patted Tony on the back, and began to walk away.

"McGee," Tony called out.

"Yeah, Ton."

"Take this with you; put it in my apartment," he said, handing Tim Ziva's personal effects and leather bag. "Thanks."

It was the most coherent thing Tony had said to him all day, and Tim gladly took on the task. He thought he should say something to offer Tony comfort, support, anything. But when he looked up, he watched Tony clasp a necklace around his neck, drop it into his shirt, and straighten out his collar. "Um, Ton..."

"I'll see you later, Tim," Tony said, striding back to the door.

"**Ready?" the nurse asked, assessing Tony's reaction.**

"Yeah. Why not," Tony said, following. There was nothing quite so lonely, he decided, as being led into the desperate quiet of a recovery room while the rest of the world slept.

"We'll start at her feet," the nurse said, leading Tony to Ziva's room. "I'll explain everything, and then, if you're doing okay, we'll move to her side."

"Wait," Tony said, grabbing her by the elbow. The nurse stopped, turned to him, and waited for him to ask those questions that they always asked. "How bad is it? I mean, will I recognize her?"

She rubbed his arm, and said, "Well, she's swollen, and tomorrow the swelling will be worse. The left side of her head is shaved, and there's a five inch incision that's being held together with staples across her scalp. It can be kind of gruesome, if you're not used to that sort of thing." She could see him processing the information, his eyes set with a heavy brow, jaw clamped shut, one hand anchored to his hip, the other raking through his hair. "I'll be with you. You'll be fine."

When they stepped into the room, the nurse held him at the door. Tony would have probably stopped of his own accord had she not. None of it was familiar to him, not the sights, the temperature, the smell, none of it.

"It's cold in here," he whispered, trying to see her amongst the machines and tubes and lines.

The nurse nodded, and said, "We keep it cold to help lessen the swelling."

A single sheet covered Ziva's naked body, exposing her feet, her legs, her shoulders and arms. "Is she... I mean, can she..."

"The cold doesn't bother her at all," she said, shaking her head. "She's not uncomfortable."

Tony bobbed his head. "Okay. Okay."

"Ready?" she asked, placing a hand on his back.

Was he ready? He wasn't sure, but Tony wanted to be near her. So he took the first step, and the nurse guided him to his partner's right side. Standing an arm's length from Ziva-he needed the space, at least for the next few moments-Tony swallowed hard.

There was so much to take in-the whirl and ping of machines, screens that lit blue, red, white, green, yellow lines and numbers, and somewhere among it all was Ziva. "Did she hurt her neck in the fall?" Tony asked, realizing Ziva was wearing a cumbersome, plastic cervical collar.

"No," the nurse said. "It's just to keep her head still. She needs to be still."

"Ziva. Still. Ha, that's, uh,...that's quite a trick," Tony whispered, drawn to find some normalcy in the surroundings. He felt his knees begin to wobble, so he hunkered down into a squat, grabbed the bedrail for support.

"You okay?" the nurse asked, touching his back.

"Yeah. Yeah. Just..." From his position, level with her profile, Ziva didn't look too bad-a tube sprouting from her lips, but still Ziva. Tousled hair, pulled into a pony tail that pooled along her shoulder, no makeup-Tony liked her like this, like she was just sleeping, just waking up in the morning. Any minute now, and she'd open those obsidian eyes, blink, and tell him "Good morning," in her soft voice that so few ever heard. He looked down the rest of her body. The immodest sheet barely covered her breasts, and Tony reached out to pull the sheet a little higher. She wouldn't want him to see her like this. It would bother her, he thought.

It struck him as so odd, so incomprehensible that from this angle Ziva looked healthy. Not a scratch on her, not a single mar. How was this possible? Who falls while shaving her legs and ends up in a coma? Of all the things Ziva had survived, and a simple household fall was the one that got her. It made no sense, whatsoever.

Tony pulled air into his lungs that desperately needed the extra oxygen. And when his head no longer swam, he stood up, never releasing the rail. "Is she in any pain?" he asked.

"Not at all. We have her heavily sedated," she said, watching him carefully. "You ready to go around to the other side?"

"Yeah, I think so," Tony said, wishing Ziva would just wake up and look at him. Tell him she was okay.

"If at any time you feel lightheaded or queasy, you just tell me," the nurse said, guiding Tony around the foot of Ziva's bed.

He thought he should say something sarcastic, but, as they moved to Ziva's left side, Tony began to viscerally understand what the nurse was saying. Ziva's scalp had been shaved, a great swath from her temple to behind her ear. A garish incision snaked its way over her puffy skin.

"I think she must have hit the, uh, the uh..." Tony tried to say, pointing at the raised welt above her ear. If he could see her injuries as clues to a crime, then he could deal with that which was incomprehensible before him. "The, uh..." When he felt his vision begin to go out, he reached forward to grab the railing on the bed, and a chair was pressed against the back of his knees. Tony didn't have to wonder if he should sit. He was going to need to sit. And now.

It was obscene. A lazy S of an incision, the length of a nightcrawler. Small, metal staples, inconsistent in their pattern, lay a crazy trestle over the deep, red track, its edges distended. And at the end, a plastic tube oozed pink fluid down to a bulb.

The nurse had been through this countless times, so she knew the unspoken questions. Leaning down, her blue-gloved hand touching Ziva's scalp, the nurse explained, "During the surgery, we drilled holes in these two places. We suctioned off the accumulated blood and checked for other bleeders. The drain will come out in a couple days."

"She was talking," Tony whispered, reaching through the bed rails to wrap his warm hand around her cool arm. "In the office, this morning, and in the car, she was talking, lucid. How's that possible?"

"If the timeline you provided is even close to accurate, she had been bleeding into her brain for at least two hours before we were able to find it," the nurse told him. "She couldn't have known."

"When will she wake up?"

"We're going to keep her sedated for a day or two, and then she'll start waking up," she said.

"_Start_ waking up?" he asked, taking his eyes off Ziva just for a moment.

"It will be slow, Mr. DiNozzo," she told him, "and it will be on her own time."

"Now, that's the best news I've heard all day," Tony said, returning his gaze upon the shadowy skin of Ziva's scalp; to the dots of blood where the tiny staples gathered the edges, like fault lines. "Ziva's what you call a warrior. She'll be up and around in no time."

"She's had a significant brain injury," the nurse reminded him. "Hope for a few days; prepare for more."

"You don't know her," Tony said, grabbing hold of Ziva's hand, so still in his. Still and cool.

The nurse wasn't going to argue with this man. Hope was a powerful thing, but so were neurological injuries. Soon enough he would realize the same. "Talk to her."

"About what?"

"Anything. Tell her where she is."

"I thought you said she won't remember anything," Tony said, glancing over his shoulder at the nurse.

"She won't, but she'll hear it now," she said. "Talk to her."

And so he did. "Um, hey, Ziva. It's me, Tony, but you probably knew that," he began, reaching in to brush a errant lock of hair from her forehead, so careful not to touch her skin. "You're in the hospital. You fell in the shower. But you're fine. Or, at least, you will be fine. Your doctors and nurses are taking great care of you. I'm here. And I'm not going anywhere, so take your time, but, you know, not too much time. You're safe, Ziva. You're safe."


	3. Chapter 3

Happy New Year to all! Here in the dead-center of the country, it's an hour and change away. For those overseas, you're already in the future! Fuh-reaky!

Thank you all for your continued support. I hope you enjoy this latest chapter.

****

**Days slipped by, a melange of doctors and nurses, friends, changes in IV bags**. The lighting never changed, and Tony began to lose track of morning from afternoon, night from day, and always her passive features and his prattle of her whereabouts, of her condition, of all those things that made a person grateful. Some hours he would sing to her, and some he would tell her about movies, and some he would assist the nurses to change her bedding, or her now ever-present, thin gown.

The one constant-her hand in his, a union of hope.

Tony learned all the names of the ICU staff, the surgeons, the nurses, hoping that if he could make it personal, if he could be an extension of Ziva, they'd put in just a little extra time with her, and then she'd wake up.

Friends would come as time allowed, some bringing Tony food, some bringing a chance for him to go home and shower, maybe even rest for a couple hours. Gibbs always brought coffee. Tony would clap them on the shoulder, thank them all, and, depending on the day, would either accept their assistance or not. Usually not. He wanted to be there when she woke up, and she would wake up soon. He knew it.

Oh, he'd make it into the office, a couple hours at a time, but hardly what you'd call in-depth, investigative work. Just enough to say he was still employed, but they all knew. They knew.

On the fourth day, with the side of her head swollen and discolored, he asked if it were possible that she might not wake up.

"It's like when you have to force-quit your computer," one nurse told him. "The hematoma overloaded her brain and it seized up. We effectively pushed force-quit. It's just taking her brain a little while to reboot."

Tony thought Tim would have taken issue with that particular simile. But it helped. A little.

On the sixth day, her eyes opened. Tony ran from the room, calling out the day nurse's name, and then he charged back in to take Ziva's hand again. "I'm here, Ziva. That's my girl!"

Diana the day nurse wasn't as ecstatic, describing it as an "autonomic response." She rubbed her knuckles over Ziva's sternum, pinched her fingertip, hoping to elicit a pain response, which she did not receive, and showed Tony that, although her eyes were open, Ziva was far from awake.

"Be ready," the neurosurgeon told Tony and Abby that afternoon. "In this state of secondary coma, patients can become agitated."

"Agitated?" Tony asked.

"Lashing out, taking swipes at those who are caring for them," he said.

"That's good, right?" Abby said, wide-eyed and nodding. "That means she's trying to find her way home."

"No, that means her blood pressure is increasing, and we don't want that, not yet. She still has a lot of healing to do," he said, and yet again, their grasp on hope took a hit. "Keep her calm. When that becomes too difficult, we'll assist with medication and restraints."

Tony laughed, incredulous that Ziva, in her diminished capacity, would ever need to be restrained. "Come on! How bad can it be?"

That afternoon, Ziva repeatedly swung her legs out of the bed, as if it were time to get up in the morning. The nurses and Tony would swing them back in, and they'd tell her to be still, stay in bed. But it was like trying to reason with a sleep walker, a sleep walker with a mean right hook.

The first time Ziva's flailing hand connected with Tony's gut, he realized just what the doctors were trying to tell him. Tony was just happy the hand had not had a Sig Sauer in it. Then it became a game, almost. A game to see which one of them was more stubborn. Tony would hold her hand, and then both hands when it became necessary. "Oh, yeah, you're scrappy today. Who you fighting in there, hmm, Ziva? You fighting the Palestinians? Is there an arms dealer you're after? Who?"

When she tore out her IV, it ceased to be a game.

The nurse rushed in to stop the bleeding and to start a new line, and Tony stumbled out to wash his hands and to change his shirt. It wasn't the first time he'd had Ziva's blood on him, but it was the first time it made him vomit.

Later that afternoon, when Tony's strength returned and Ziva's had subsided with a bolus of sedative, he lumbered into her room once again, pulled up the chair, and reached for her hand.

"Okay, so, let's try this again," he told her, hoping to forget the last couple hours. Running his fingertip along each of hers, he noticed, maybe for the first time, that she had nails, pretty fingernails. That alone brought him a new sense of sorrow. His tired gaze climbed to her face, to the chaos of hair that branched out across her pillow. He rose to his feet, reached out to comb the bramble off her face, to somehow control the mess. Ziva wouldn't like it, he thought, having her hair all over like this. She'd want it pulled back. She'd brush it, and straighten it, and put whatever product she used to make it shine like ebony against her porcelain skin. With his fingers, trembling and unsure, he worked her long, unruly locks to one side, even slid his fingers under her neck to gather all that he could. He smoothed his broad hand over her hair, separated it the best he could into three strands and began to braid, a loose, long braid, which he lay against her shoulder.

"There. It's a little better," he whispered, touching the soft twining of hair. "I think you'd, uh... I think..."

When the sight of her began to waver, when his chin trembled, Tony moved away from her, down the bed. Fiddled with the change in his pocket. Swallowed, then swallowed again. Cleared his throat. Tried to take deep breaths. Just calm down, he told himself. Get it together, and calm down. He washed a hand across his tight features, grasped hold of the foot of her bed, and forced himself to relax.

"Pull yourself together, DiNozzo," he chastised, grinding his teeth, screwing shut his eyes. He threw his hands behind his head, his face to the ceiling and forced his lungs to suck in air. She deserved better than this, he thought. She deserves so much better.

Tony took a few unmeasured and unexacting steps around the room, practicing this skill of breathing that he seemed to have lost, and then he returned to her side with a final, thorough exhalation of stagnant air.

"You deserve better, Ziva," he whispered, his eyes heavy with fatigue and an anguish he tried so hard to deny. "You deserve so much more, but I'm all you got, so..."

Tony pulled the chair close to her bed, reached through the rails and grasped hold of her hand. "You're safe, Ziva. I'm here. It's time to wake up, Sweet Cheeks..."

**When the week was over**, when his timeline for when Ziva would be better and home came and went, Tony began to know despair. He'd been through this before with Ziva, waiting for her to return. And she did, which gave him every right to believe she'd return from this sojourn into the surreal. The last time, though, was just a group of silly terrorists. Sure, they were deadly terrorists-only the best for Ziva David, but infallible, narcissistic terrorists, nonetheless.

Being held captive by her own brain...? Now that was a formidable opponent, and Tony was beginning to lose what was left of his waining faith.

The night nurse, who had seen Tony countless times over the past week, urged him to go downstairs to the cafeteria and eat, which Tony protested against, at first, but then realized that he actually was hungry. He promised to make it quick, because he wanted to be with Ziva should she decide to wake up. The nurse smiled, and never let on that she'd heard that same line a thousand times, and there was always time for a sandwich.

It took him ten minutes to acquire a sandwich palatable enough to pass as a meal, and on the way back to Ziva's room, Tony stopped to make a quick call to Gibbs, just to check in.

"Is he there yet?" Gibbs asked.

"Is who here, Boss?"

"Eli David."

Ice water cascaded over Tony's skin, and he clamped shut his eyes. Tony chucked the sandwich in the nearest trash can, his appetite suddenly gone. One hand on the phone, the other kneading away a newfound headache, Tony said, "That's all I need. Nope. No, Daddy David and his Minions of Mirth haven't shown up yet. When did all this happen?"

"Just got word from Vance."

"Wonder how long he's known."

"Hard to tell," Gibbs said, his words tight and quiet. "I'll drop by in a few hours, give you a break."

"Nah," Tony said, spinning to peer down the hallway, see if he could catch a glimpse of the Director of Mossad. "I'm fine. Been a pretty quiet day."

"You don't have to do this by yourself, DiNozzo," Gibbs reminded him.

"I know, Boss," Tony said, ambling toward Ziva's room, just as a blockade of dark worsted-wool suits entered the corridor. "Gotta go. The Israeli contingent is here."

"Agent DiNozzo," Eli David said, his great hands clenched before him. "How is my daughter?"

"Well, Director," Tony said, conjuring up all the sarcasm and bitterness he possibly could, "she's not feeling her best. Took a pretty good fall, and now she's got a little bit of a scramble going on in that brain of hers."

Eli thrust his hands in his suit pocket, sighed, and said, "You and I have a history. Of this, I am well aware. But at this time, Agent DiNozzo, I would ask that you put aside our past. Please. I may be many things, but I am still her father."

And when he recognized in Eli's eyes that which he saw in his own eyes-the pain, the sorrow, the feeling of impotence-Tony invited the man into Ziva's room and explained to him all that he knew about Ziva's condition.

There was a part of Tony that didn't want to allow the man this grace, a few moments alone with Ziva. He honestly didn't believe the son of a bitch deserved those rights that any father might be accorded. A greater part knew this wasn't an ordinary situation. Even so, Tony kept watch over the proceedings, but when Ziva began to fidget, then tense, then kick, Tony stepped to her side, and Eli stumbled back.

"Ziva," Tony called out, taking her face in his hands, smoothing back the tangled hair from the purple-yellow petechia that mottled her forehead, "calm down, now. Come on, Ziva. You're safe. Nobody's gonna hurt you. Calm down. Shhhh..."

The tempest subsided, and the monitor next to her bed quantitatively showed that rest had come again.

"Leave it to my Ziva to fight, even in a coma," Eli said, but the presence of his political mite wasn't there. Left only with the powerlessness a parent feels when his child is sick, the ineptitude of suffering, Eli David crept to his daughter's side, kissed her head, and lay the burden of her recovery at Tony's feet.

"I promise I'll take care of her," Tony said, and shook the man's trembling hand. "You have my word."

**And Tony did care for her, for hours, for days**, stroking her hands, massaging her legs and arms, rolling her when the nurse was short handed and needed to change her bedding. He talked endlessly to her, until all that was left of his voice was a raspy whisper, and still he continued, recounting all the places they had been together, all the cases they had worked, all the movies and dinners and conversations they had shared.

Gibbs was like clockwork, always showing up before regular visiting hours were over. Ten days into the ordeal, he found Tony outside Ziva's door, his hands behind his back, propped up against the wall. With his head slung down and his eyes closed, Tony didn't immediately register Gibbs' presence, and it gave Jethro a chance to really read his senior agent, and what he read was disconcerting. Dead on his feet, wearing the same shirt he had worn the day before, badly in need of a shave, Tony looked like he was a quick candidate for his own hospital room.

"Hey. DiNozzo," Gibbs said, tapping his chest.

Tony's head snapped up with a loud inhalation of air. It took him a moment to become fully awake, and when he did, he said, "Oh. Hey, Boss."

"How's Ziva?"

Tony tried to steal a peek into her room, but the privacy curtain had been pulled. "She's, uh... " The banal, scatological business of the comatose patient, one side of it all Tony was happy not to be a part of. "They're cleaning her up, changing her catheter, her feeding tube, that sort of thing." Tony nodded, winked, and clucked his tongue to the side of his cheek. A weak approximation of nonchalance and stamina.

"Any change?"

Tony thought about the question. "Um..." Change. Was she still comatose, a body without a soul, like a neon sign hanging in a window lacking an electrical impulse? Yes. Were her eyes open but blank? Yup. Still doll's eyes. Could he reach for her, touch her arm, her face, feel the tight grip of her hand and still know she was nowhere near him? Same old, same old. And did he still yearn for her, with a hope that was dwindling like an unwinding spool of thread?

"Tony?"

Hadn't he answered Gibbs? Tony searched the man's eyes. "What?"

Gibbs slid a hand around Tony's arm, then ushered him to the quiet of a waiting room, and sat him down. Tony propped his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, the geometry of exhaustion. Gibbs sat next to him, his warm hand rubbing Tony's back, not expecting and not receiving any further explanation on Ziva's condition. Hell, he could ask a nurse if he wanted to know. Right now, he was more concerned with his senior agent.

"When's the last you ate?" he asked.

"Um," Tony began, massaging his aching forehead.

"Come on," Gibbs said, hoisting him from where he sat. Tony, too tired to argue, drew to his feet. "I know a bar near here. It's dark. Quiet. I'll buy you a beer."

"I don't know, Boss," Tony mumbled, scouring the heel of his hands into his sore eyes.

"Tony, you need a change of scenery," Gibbs told him.

"But what if she wakes up?" he asked.

Gibbs took a deep breath, narrowed his eyes, and came to the realization that Tony had been predicating his entire life for the last week and a half on "But what if she wakes up?"

"One beer," he told him, counting on how one beer leads to two, to three. Then, if Gibbs drove slowly enough, Tony would surely fall asleep in the Charger, and, need be, Gibbs would drive to the Outer Banks and back. "I'll have you back before you know it."

Tony's eyes were heavy and his focus weak, but he nodded. Patted Jethro on the shoulder, and said he'd get his jacket.

Before they had driven out of the hospital parking lot, Tony was asleep, and Gibbs turned the car around. He found a secluded spot, far from the stairwell and the ramp, retrieved the emergency blanket he always had stored in his trunk, and wrapped it around Tony's sleeping form.

Seven hours later, Tony woke up, and his boss was there to hand him a cup of coffee, a jelly donut and a clean shirt.


	4. Chapter 4

A nice long chapter for you. I'm going out of town for a few days, but if I get a chance, I'll post a chapter over the weekend. Thank you, again, for all your kind words. Your encouragement has been inspirational.

NCISNCISNCISNCISNCIS

**Friends ambled into the room day by day**, offering words of hope and encouragement. And even though they weren't qualified or trained to make such prognoses, most told Tony it was just a matter of days before she'd wake up, and that doctors don't always know what they're talking about, and other ridiculous greeting-card lines that Tony knew were just so much hot air. No one wanted to believe it more than Tony, but no one knew the truth of the matter like Tony, either. And the truth was Ziva wasn't waking up. That she was wasting away. That every day she remained in the etherized world of coma, her chances of regaining her place in the corporeal world diminished.

It was a world of dreams for Ziva and nightmares for Tony.

A second Friday was fast approaching, and Tony spun through his iPod playlist, settling on the album "Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely." He thought it was highly appropriate to listen to Old Blue Eyes croon about the state of loneliness while he himself sat alongside his distant partner. He perused the list, ending on "One For My Baby."

"Ha, you remember this one, Ziva?" he asked, tucking one white bud into her ear, the other in his. The soft tinkling of a piano and the moan of violins ambled under Sinatra's emotive voice- "It's quarter to three, there's no one in the place, 'cept you and me..." Tony sat on the edge of her bed, draped her arm across his legs, and hummed along with the words for a measure or two. A smile lit upon his face, and he said, "Karaoke in Richmond. You sang a Nina Simone song, and I sang this. Good times. We should do that more often." He ran his fingers across the length of her arm. Her free hand lifted from the bed, and Tony pinned it across her abdomen. Her unfocused eyes stared at nothing, and her lips met, opened and met again, a motion he was used to seeing. "You want me to sing some more? Okay... 'I got the routine, put another nickel in the machine. Feelin' so bad, can't you make the music easy and sad?'" The last words stuck in his throat, a clog of memories, emotion and the unknown. Unable to speak, Tony let Frank tell the rest of the sad story.

A most remarkable thing happened. Beyond the contraction of muscles, her lips formed a soundless word. "Home."

He stared at her. He did not breathe. He did not move. He waited.

"Home."

Tony jumped from the edge of the bed, wrapped his hand across her forehead, and said, "I'm here, Ziva. Say it again, honey. I'm listening!"

And although it was unvoiced, a combination of consonants and vowels formed around a ventilator tube, Ziva said it again. "Home."

Tony jabbed at the call button, shaking with excitement. "I can hear you, Ziva!"

Chris, the shift nurse, scurried in, and took note of the event.

Tony scrubbed the back of Ziva's hand in his, grinned, and said, "This is a good thing, right? She can talk. It's a good thing. Of course, it is."

"Ziva," the nurse boomed, taking her hand in hers, "time to wake up now. Can you squeeze my hand? Come on now, Agent David, squeeze my hand."

Fingers, soft as air, fluttered in their grips, and Tony burst out in laughter. "Ha! _That's_ what I'm _talkin'_ about!"

"I'll call her doctor," Chris said, leaving Tony alone to watch for more words. But there were none. Not for the rest of the day.

Still, it was something.

**In those days, when Ziva would move through old missions and seek out her target**, all from the confines of a hospital bed, and all elbows and knees, Tony would hold her still. Grasp both her wrists in an iron grip while he talked to her, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice. She'd bolt up in bed, and Tony would press her back down, and never even a ghost of emotion would float across her face.

Protecting her from her mind was one kind of anguish. Deciphering her wants and needs, her desires, was another.

Seated on the edge of her bed, his almost constant perch, Tony wiped a warm washcloth across Ziva's face and neck. It seemed to bring her comfort and peace, and even if she didn't need to be peaceful, Tony needed it.

Soothing her skin and, he hoped, those inner demons, Tony rambled on, like he had been doing for days on end.

"So, that's how I got thrown out of St. Anthony's Preparatory and Boarding School. Seems leaving Mass to make an intercontinental phone call in the monsignor's office is counterproductive to the whole 'Educate the heart, and the mind will follow' principle they were going for. Personally, that's exactly what I thought I was doing. Rachel, I believe, was the name of the girl. I met her on spring break. She was in a similar predicament, only in Switzerland. Anyhow, at the end of the day, Senior wrote Monsignor a hefty check for the calls, another one to the alumni association of St. Thomas More in Connecticut to evaluate my mid-year application, and thus began the Big Chill of 1985, '86, '87-pretty much the rest of the decade. Guess I kind of lost track of Rachel after that."

Ziva's lips gathered, released, and gathered again, another in a series of autonomic responses, he was told. When it first happened, Tony wondered if Ziva wanted him to kiss her. Her surgeons would say other things- "That's a great bilateral response"-which was almost as nonsensical to Tony as Ziva asking for a kiss.

Drawing the cloth over her arm and hand, he continued. "You'll be happy to hear your hair is growing in. Got a nice Rihanna/Cassie-thing going there. I like it." Her lips pulled into a half-formed pucker again, and Tony shook his head, rubbed the back of his fingers across her cheek. "You want a kiss, Ziva? Well, get in line, sister," he said.

But her lips continued to gather, and her agitation increased. "Fine. Feels a little odd, a little morbid, what with you all comatose and all, but, ya know, what's good for Pedro Almodovar..." Tony leaned over and kissed her cheek, just to quiet her. What could it hurt? He'd kissed her before, plenty of times. And it did quiet her, so he kissed her again, closer this time, longer, his lips coming away tasting of salt and sweat and surgical tape. It was only at that moment that he realized why he'd kissed her, not because she wanted a kiss, but because he wanted to kiss her, and had for a long time. Kissing her to express his care, his worry. He realized at that moment that he kissed her out of affection, and in that natural reaction to such a deep, consuming emotion, Tony shuddered.

He touched his forehead to hers, closed his eyes, and ground down on his teeth, and when he pulled away, regret, remorse and shame mixed in now with the taste of her. Tony wiped a shaking hand across his mouth, and his gaze fell gently on her closed eyes, on her lips that still demanded his. He smoothed back the hair from her forehead, and shook his head, cleared his suddenly constricted throat, and said, "What's going on in there, Ziva? What's going on in me?"

**It surprised him how quickly sadness would wash over him**.

And anger.

As much as he wanted to be with Ziva every moment, in case she needed him, which she did-she told him that every day, in a million different, silent ways-he still had a job to do. Not that he did it well, but he was there.

On a particularly grey Monday morning, when Tony had spent the weekend holding Ziva's hand, trying to keep the restraints from being used, those cumbersome, violent looking restraints, he slogged into the office. All he wanted to do was put his head on his desk, cocoon himself in his suit coat, and sleep. But, Tim's voice just kept prattling on about...well, Tony wasn't sure what Probie was actually talking about. Didn't really care, but that voice, that continuous drone was drilling into Tony's skull, like a bone saw.

"Did you get the information, or not, McGee?" Gibbs asked from his desk, growing just as tired of the explanation.

"Yeah, Boss," McGee said, coming around his desk, having sent an image up to the big screen. "Taubler was in Norfolk between the dates of October 22nd and 24th, which would discount his story he originally told us."

"You're sure?"

"I am," Tim said, nodding, proud of himself for having made the connection.

"Then bring him in."

"On it, Boss," Tim said, sliding back behind his desk, while Gibbs gathered files to take to the director's office.

"That's good work, McGee," Gibbs told him, and something in that exchange pinged a nerve in Tony, and before he could even stop himself, he was glaring at Tim.

"You found Taubler because he had a reaction to a flu shot," Tony hissed. "Brilliant, Needles McGee."

"It doesn't matter how you get there, Tony," Tim said, typing in the necessary information to issue a warrant on Petty Officer Taubler. "The little things matter just as much as the big things."

"Little things," Tony spat out, shaking his head. "Yeah, you're right, Timmy. Little, like your investment in this case. A contaminated vial of flu vaccine? Come on!"

"DiNozzo," Gibbs warned, to no avail.

"But, you know, you got a point, aside from that one on the top of your head," Tony went on, launching himself from his desk to stare down Tim. "It is the little things, like a smile. Like a tongue that sticks out. Oh, to you and me, it seems like one of those...little things. That what you call it? But to a neurosurgeon, it's a bilateral movement, and they're just pleased as punch. Hell, they're ecstatic! Just like you, Probie, with your bad batch of bug repellant. Meanwhile, doesn't change the fact that our petty officer's CO is decomposing in a body bag and Ziva's still a vegetable, now does it, Tim?"

Storming out from behind his desk, Gibbs barked, "DiNozzo!"

Refusing to take his embittered eyes off Tim, Tony answered exactly as he knew he should. "On your six, Boss!"

The two men marched to a secluded section of the bullpen, below the stairs, where Tony was sure Gibbs would beat him down to the formless husk of a man he already knew he was.

The steely, intractable penetration of ice blue eyes would make any mortal wither, and Tony girded himself, trying to approximate an equally formidable stare as he held fast to his anger, his resentment. Resentment that the world just went on. That his partner lay disconnected to him and to life, day after day, hour after hour, as life went on without her, and that nobody seemed to notice but him!

Gibbs narrowed his eyes, scanning his senior agent's expression, finding what he already knew, what he'd been accustomed to seeing these past weeks-Tony was spent, physically, emotionally. Dog tired, at the end of his rope, but just stubborn enough, just goddamn desperate enough to think that he could try to do it all. And maybe Jethro understood a little better than he let on why Tony was beat. After all, he'd often checked in on Ziva late in the evening, only to find her hand in Tony's, and Tony asleep in the side chair. There were a few evenings when he'd find Tony asleep in her bed, curled up behind her, anchoring her down with his arm. The nurses would tell Gibbs that sometimes it was the only way to get Ziva to sleep, and wasn't Agent DiNozzo such a sweet, kind man? He must really love her...

Would Gibbs ever let Tony know he was aware of these intimate moments? No. Did it bother him that these acts of affection flew in the face of rule number 12, never date a coworker? Oh, a little. Probably more than a little. Extenuating circumstances, he rationalized, and there was a distinct lack of flowers and candlelight in her hospital room, so really, not a date, but definitely beyond "I got your back," especially since he physically had her back.

So Jethro knew the harsh words Tony had spewed in the bullpen were borne of these and many more nights, so a certain amount of latitude was in order. But not much.

When Gibbs shifted his stance and without words said to Tony "Come on, DiNozzo!" guilt began to gurgle inside, and the standoff was over. He anchored a hand to his hip, took a deep breath, and let his shoulders slump. Damn, he thought, pinching the bridge of his nose, suddenly aware of a headache building behind his sinuses. He had tried so hard to keep it all together, to be the partner Ziva needed and the team member Gibbs counted on. But it was all becoming too much, and he had snapped at the one guy who deserved it the least: McGee. There was no reason to talk to Tim that way, and Tony knew it. Gibbs knew Tony knew it.

Tony braced his hand to the wall, unable, just yet, to look at Gibbs, so deep was his embarrassment and shame.

"Hey," Gibbs voiced, cocking his head to find DiNozzo's bloodshot eyes, forcing him to look up from his self-loathing, and when Tony didn't look up, Gibbs said it again. "Hey!"

"Um," Tony began, clearing away the distortion in his voice, "I think I'm gonna..."

"Go home," Gibbs told him.

When he did finally regain his bearings, when he felt he could look his boss in the eye without being reduced to a puddle, Tony nodded.

The heat that had fueled their departure had dissipated, and Tony slogged back into the center of the bullpen, stopping before Tim's desk, who waited for his obviously distressed and repentant friend to make the first move.

"Look, Tim," was all Tony managed before Tim stood up, gave a brisk bob of the head, and offered his hand, which Tony took.

"Don't worry about it," Tim said, his features compassionate yet uncompromising. "But, don't do it again."

Tony guessed he deserved the reprimand. He lowered his eyes, chucked Tim on the arm, and grabbed his belongings.

So much for a hard day's work.

He meant to follow orders, to go home, like Gibbs had told him, but as if guided by its own navigational system, he found his car headed for the hospital. Hell, if he needed to, he'd sleep in the chair next to her bed. Two birds, one stone. He hardly knew what his apartment looked like these days, anyhow, and it wasn't as if he slept there any better than he did by her side, holding onto her hand between bed rails, reminding her of who she was, until his arm fell asleep.

Just like it was any ordinary Monday.

Except, it wasn't.

He stepped into her room and found a clutch of nurses bustled around his chair, their movements jutting and lacking the usual fluidity. Between them was a fat quarter of cloth, bound by tubes and topped by a cervical collar.

The realization hit him like an arctic wind, that this was a person slumped between them. That the boneless form they were manipulating into the chair, whose head tilted listlessly to the side, whose mouth hung agape, whose flat eyes caught no light, and whose dark hair tumbled artlessly from her head was Ziva.

"What's going on?" Tony asked, unsure he said it aloud or only to himself.

Angela, the day's shift nurse, glanced over at Tony, and said, "Change of venue. Helps the process sometimes." Just as quickly, she resumed her work, positioning the acquiescent body in the chair, strapping Ziva into a sitting position, clearing tubes.

Ziva needed him. That's why he spent all his days and nights at the hospital, because she needed him to be in the room with her, holding her hand, waiting for that moment her eyes would focus on him, and he could say, "I'm here." She needed him, and he kept telling himself that in order to keep coming back day after day after day after...

But here he was again, across from her, and there she was again, being placed into a chair, half-dead, and she gave no visible notion that he was in the room with her, or that she cared. Or worse-that she didn't want him with her. Again. That he shouldn't bother. That she was ready to die. Again.

Truth serum or not, it was at that moment that Tony knew why he was standing helplessly by in her hospital room, hardly able to breathe.

He needed _her_.

She was the reason in his frenetic, irrational world. She tethered him to care, to devotion, and let him fly unbound into passion. She was his waking thought and his cooling water. She was that shim in his soul that kept him balanced and centered. She dazzled him, and challenged him, and without her, he was walking in circles, alone and unsure of himself.

He needed her, and her slack features told him what he already knew-she didn't care. That he was as important to her as all the stories he had told her, as all the songs he forced into her deaf ears.

"You can come in," Angela said, but when she turned to look for him, Tony was gone.

He didn't remember when the afternoon's glaring sun slid into the evening's moonless sky. He hadn't looked at his watch when he finally stumbled breathless into his apartment, coming to sit awkwardly, without thought, on his coffee table, where he would stare into the closed translucent drapes, still wearing his trench coat, his holster, his badge, while memories of her hovered all around him.

But somewhere over the course of hours, necessity pulled him from his stupor, pulled him from that abyss where all reality expressed itself in shocking brutality.

Flipping the light on in his kitchen, Tony shielded his eyes, and came to realize just how long he had been languishing in his dark apartment, caught between the worlds of purpose and futility. Between hope and despair.

How many nights had he stood at his kitchen counter, talking himself into pouring a drink, talking himself out of drinking it? How often had he reached for the tumbler, the ice, the Johnny Walker Gold, only to wipe away the want with the thought that she might wake up?

Two cubes, that's all. You don't water down the Gold; you open it up, expose its peaty undertones. That's what his father had taught him when Tony was younger than the bottle of fifteen-year-old Scotch. Senior had told him that you pour two fingers and three on top of that, and you drink it down before the ice cubes lost their hard edges.

The ice cubes, he figured out years later, were only truly there to cool down the glass that you'd roll across your aching brow, and the tumbler etched with diamonds was for kneading away the tension, because if you were tossing back Johnny Walker Gold like it was ginger ale, your life was well and truly in shambles, and only the cold feel of cut glass could penetrate through that much pain. The Johnny Walker Gold just helped anesthetize the ache.

Tony placed the glass on the counter, unable just yet to release it. It was empty. Empty as her eyes. Empty as his life without her, and that alone brought a deeper level of emptiness.

Why had he bothered? What kind of fool was he to think that it mattered whether he was with her? Who was he to her, really? They'd had their moments, sure, and they'd had cloaked, obfuscated conversations about their true feelings for each other, but no promises had been made, so why? Why? Why was he killing himself to be with her every moment he could possibly carve out? Would she ever know, and even if she did, would it matter?

And what if it did matter, but Ziva never woke up? What then? When would he decide that enough was enough? How long could he last being at her side? Did he have that kind of strength?

Then again, how could he not? Life without Ziva-an abyss. Bottomless. Hollow.

Tony clamped both hands to the edge of his counter, locked out his elbows, and let his tired head fall to his chest.

And wept.


	5. Chapter 5

He woke up at 6:57 AM, feeling as sour as a mildewed dish cloth. Once again, Tony had fallen asleep in his suit, teeth unbrushed, watch still around his wrist. Which presented a problem. The close proximity of his watch meant he could that much more easily see the time and the date, and then it would make it harder to lie to himself and anyone else who cared to ask why he didn't make it into the hospital this morning.

So he didn't look.

Didn't need to. He knew what time it was. He knew the date.

Two weeks.

Well, technically, in two more hours it would be two weeks.

If he could just not breathe too heavily; if he could lie still without the universe knowing he was awake; if his bladder didn't kick into gear... If all these things could occur, then Tony thought he just might let time slip by.

But he sneezed. And then he had to go to the bathroom. And if he was in the bathroom, hell, might as well get in the shower.

Time to beat that dead horse, Tony thought, and then winced. That's not what he meant. He didn't mean to imply...

He stared at himself in the mirror a good long time, wondering who he was trying to convince of his intentions.

In the shower, he made a plan-go to work; put in a full day; see Ziva after dinner. He'd stay an hour, maybe two, but life had to go on. Ziva would tell him the same thing, if she were with him. Yes, it was time to be practical about the whole situation, like Ziva. Practical. Pragmatic. Realistic. When she woke up, the nurses would call. Really, there was no need for him to be there. Until that time when Ziva regained consciousness and the neurosurgeons and the rest of the staff could determine what was next, Tony would step back. It was obvious his time was better spent doing something he was good at, like investigations.

So, he had a plan, and right up to the minute he tightened the Windsor knot on his tie, he was insouciantly comfortable with that plan.

Who was he trying to kid? There was absolutely nothing practical, pragmatic or realistic about the last two weeks, and Tony could no more work her into his schedule than he could deny that his feelings for her went far deeper than he cared to admit.

He didn't _want_ to be in the hospital with her. He _had_ to be there. Even with all the uncertainty about a future, her future, his future, being with Ziva still made more sense than haphazardly going about his normal routine.

At 8:53 AM, the elevator doors slid open, and Tony stepped onto the seventh-floor wing of the hospital, just like he had every day for the last two weeks, excepting those morning when he hadn't managed to leave her side the night before.

Gone was the emphatic strut, the confident smile and reassuring handshake. Tony drudged through the ward as if on cruise control, depleted, marshaling the energy to face one more day with his endless sorrow.

A streak of a person shot out from Ziva's doorway, and Tony froze, slapped his hand to his sidearm, and shook his head. No, not the time for his gun, but something else was going on, and his pulse spiked.

"Angela," he called out, grasping for the nurse, who was rushing back into Ziva's room.

She stopped short, blinked her wide eyes, and grabbed Tony's arm. "Oh, thank god you're here."

For the second time in as many days, Tony was overcome with a paralyzing fear. She's dead, he thought. She's dead. Or she's had a seizure. Or they're taking her back to surgery. Jesus, what if she's dead? "What happened?" he asked.

But the nurse didn't answer. She yanked Tony from out of the hall, into Ziva's room, and it took him a good while to register what he was seeing. From terror to joy, all in the space of three seconds, Tony looked into-_into_ Ziva's eyes, and she looked back at him.

"You are late," Ziva said, though her voice was frail and raspy. And even though nurses scuttled around her, taking vitals, calling surgeons, the high-intensity beam between the two was unbreakable. A cockeyed smile danced onto Tony's face, and all he could do was gawk at her, amazed and completely, utterly nonplussed. "I have been waiting for... I cannot remember how long, but a _long_ time."

"We told her you usually get here by 6:30," Angela said, her quick movements tempered with a sense of happiness. "She's been asking for you for the last hour."

"For me? By name?" Tony asked, stumbling across the short expanse of Ziva's room, where he reached out and caught Ziva's awaiting hand. "You've been asking for me?"

"Yes, Tony," Ziva said, and the sound of his name coming from her took his breath away. But in the next moment, she was frowning, saying, "I have been waiting for you, and you were not here."

"I've been here."

"But you were not here when I woke up," she said with a coy edge to her weak voice.

Susan, the shift nurse, lowered her words for only Tony's audience, and said, "She's not registering the lost time. It will take a few days before she's clear about that."

Tony nodded, and happily conceded to Ziva's opinion of his negligence. "You're right. As always, Ziva, you're right. I wasn't here." It started in his gut, bubbled up into his chest, where it bloomed on his face and in his eyes-utter and consuming happiness. He opened Ziva's hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed the soft palm. And kissed it again, never taking his eyes of hers. He wanted to gather her into his arms, dance across the room with her, adorn her with kisses, with love. Instead, he took her hand in both of his and held it to his beating heart. "I'm sorry I wasn't here when you woke up. It won't happen again."

"See that it doesn't," she said, smiling at him, though her eyes registered her fatigue. Just as suddenly, a scowl came to her face, and Ziva said, "You look terrible."

Tony blinked, unable to breathe or to respond. And then he laughed, out loud and from every dormant space in his body. Rippling with laughter, he crouched down next to her bed, kissed her hand yet again, and couldn't for the life of him stop looking into her clear, sparkling eyes. "You look..." he began, undone by her presence and by her voice, so familiar and so soothing to his ears. "I just gotta say, you look gorgeous, like you normally do." A harsh wind swept across her features, bringing with it fear, as sudden and as dark as a spring storm. Ziva lifted her free hand, beckoning him to come closer, so he did. He rose himself from the side of her bed, leaned over her, stroked her hair, and sought the answer to the questions in her troubled expression. "What is it, Sweet Cheeks?"

Her eyes filled with tears then, inexplicably and without warning, and when she spoke, the fragility of her message tore into him. "I was afraid."

Tony brushed his finger across her forehead, across her cheeks. "When?"

"When I woke up," she whispered, unable, perhaps unwilling to release her intense focus on his sheltering eyes. "I didn't know where I was. I didn't know where you were. I..."

With her voice choked, Tony kissed away the first tear that fell. Kissed her eyes, her warm brow, her temple. "Shhhh..." he whispered, calming her, sensing that the nurses would demand the same. He gathered her hand in his, brought it to his lips, and kissed it. "You're safe. I'm here. Do you trust me, Ziva?"

"Yes," she whispered, touching his jawline, his supple lips.

"Then trust me when I say I'm not going anywhere and that you're gonna be fine. Can you remember that?" he asked, to which she nodded.

"I want to go home," Ziva cried, knotting her fingers in his shirt. "Please, take me home."

"I will," he told her, glancing at that garish incision snaked across her scalp, taunting him with the stark reality of her condition. "Let's get you better, and then I promise-I'll take you home."

With a nod, she closed her eyes, and a final tear coursed down her warm skin. Her hand searched for and found his, and she fell into a light, comfortable sleep.

**The call he made to the base was one of the most joyful he ever had the pleasure to make. ** Their friends wanted to descend upon her en masse, but Tony held them off, protective of her still compromised health. He allowed two at a time, spaced hours apart, and they could only stay a few moments. He warned them that she didn't know that she had been in a coma, that she wasn't quite ready to understand that two weeks had passed by.

As for Tony, he stood apart from them, still in her room, and when her tired eyes searched for him, he was there to smile at her, to wave, to wink, to determine what she needed.

After Ducky and Tim, Gibbs and Abby had checked in on her, told her how great she looked and how they all missed her; after the nurses and doctors performed their hourly assessment, Tony lowered the lights to make her more comfortable. He sat on the edge of her bed, combed his fingers across her arm and held her warm gaze with such gentility.

"Tell me again," she whispered, grasping hold of his hand.

Tony encapsulated her hand in his, and began once more. "You had an accident. A simple household mishap, the kind you hear about in statistics but don't really believe could ever happen. You fell in the shower and conked that melon of yours."

"I do not remember any of that," she said, closing her eyes.

"No, I'm sure you don't," he said, as evidenced by the fact that this was the third time he had told Ziva the story that day. The nurses said it would take time. Still recovering, they said. If time is what she needed, Tony would give it to her. So, he continued. "Had an impressive goose egg on the side of your head for a while, there, Agent David. But, being the conscientious probational agent that I've trained you to be, you managed to come into work, even though you were concussed and practically slurring your words."

Her dark eyes flashed open, and she said, "My head was...pounding. I have this...vague memory of people talking to me. You were there."

"Yes, I was, Dorothy Gale. And so was McScarecrow," Tony told her. "See, you're remembering already."

Ziva considered that small blessing, cleared her parched throat, and looked around the room. "What time is it?"

"Around 7 P.M."

"Tuesday?"

"Yes."

"So, I have been here all day."

Tony blinked. His brow creased. "Uh, well, yeah." This was an addition to the repeated conversation, so he began his explanation. "Yeah, you've been in here all day. Well, I mean, actually, Ziva, you've been here for the last two weeks."

Her dark eyes were swarms of confusion, whipping into his soul. "How is that possible?"

"You were in a coma, Ziva," he told her, rubbing her hand, offering a gentle, comforting smile, or as close an approximation of a smile as he could conjure.

"A coma?"

"Yeah, but," he began, not really sure what came after the "but." "But, you're fine. You...you suffered a brain injury..."

"A subdural hematoma, yes, I remember you told me that," she said, her focus still riveted to his.

"Oh, yeah? You remember that? That's...that's..." he stumbled, but her eyes beckoned him to continue. "Yeah, well, okay, so, you were in a coma for two weeks, practically to the hour, and...now you're not."

A swirling questions careened through her mind, and with each, Ziva's fear increased. "Am I... Can I..."

"You can speak; you can breathe; you can think," he told her, wondering if these were her concerns. Hell, they had been his. "You remember me, so how bad can it be? Am I right, or am I right?"

Tears that were so common this day crested yet again along her lashes. "Can I...walk?"

His attempt to divert her fear with humor fell flat, so Tony lessened his energy, quieted his voice, and said, "I'm sure you can."

"But, you do not know."

"No, I don't know, but I do know this," he said, opening up both of his hands in front of her. "Gimme ten."

Ziva took a deep breath to gain her center, scowled, then lifted her hands and slapped his.

"What d'ya know! We're practically playing 'Say, Say, Oh, Playmate,'" Tony told her, tapping their fingers together. When confusion poured over her face, Tony pedaled back to explain. "'Say, Say, Oh, Playmate.' It's an American hand-clapping game. You clap your hands with the rhythm of the song. 'Say, say, oh, Playmate, come out and play with me...'" Tony began before his machismo reminded him that he should not know such songs. "I...don't really...remember the... My point is-"

"'Meachorei ha-ya'ar,'" Ziva added, twining her finger with his. "Yes, we have those songs as well."

Tony brought their hands together in one conjoined knot, and his eyes narrowed, his chin lifted. "You know what you just did, Ziva?" Her furrowed brow told him she did not register the importance of the moment. "You spoke in English and Arabic. You brought your hands together at the midline of your body. I've had a lot to learn these past two weeks, and the most important thing I've learned about neurologists is they get very excited by patients who can speak clearly, who can access their memories, and-and here's the bee's knees-they really love it when their patients have equal abilities on both sides of their bodies."

"What does this mean?" Ziva asked, searching his eyes.

"It means, Sweet Cheeks, that you are gonna be just fine," Tony told her.

Ziva held his soft expression, nodded, and closed her eyes. Her left hand trailed over her aching brow, across her temple, and moved to comb her hair behind her ear. In a flash, she was searching Tony's eyes again, while the disconcerting sensation of stubble met her fingers. "What happened to... What is wrong..." Her right hand shot to the other side of her skull, where she found the long tresses she had expected. "Why..."

It was just a matter of time, he had known, before he was going to have to explain to her about the surgery. So he took his phone out of his pocket, hit the mirror app, one he was ashamed to admit he used quite often, and nestled himself next to her, one arm across the top of her pillow, one holding out the phone. And when she could see herself in the mirror, Ziva slowly turned her head. Her jaw dropped, and her fingers skittered against the long, curved scar, barely masked by the shorn, dark hair.

Tony watched her expression in the mirror, his face as close to hers as he could get. He wanted her to know that this particular sight wasn't anything to be afraid of, that it looked frightening, but it was just a scar. And so he smiled at her, and said, "See? It's not so bad. Your hair, by the way, grows really fast."

Tears supplanted her words. She lay her hand, shaking and unsure, across her scalp and wept. Still, she kept her eyes riveted to the mirror, dashing between this garish incision across her scalp and Tony's harboring eyes.

"Well, if you ask me, it's very sexy," Tony told her, brushing her remaining hair from her forehead. "You got a Rihanna, shaved-scalp thing going on that's, frankly, very hot. Of course, I've always had a thing for bald women. Sigourney Weaver in-"

"What happened?"

Her abrupt words, the strength in them stopped Tony. "You had a bleed in your brain from the fall. They had to go in to relieve the pressure. But you're fine, Ziva. No more bleeders. You're fine, and you're here. And you're getting better." He put the phone back in his pocket, turned to face her, stroking the side of her flushed face, and said, "And your hair will grow back, and one day this will all be a crazy, distant memory." She clung to him, to his confidence, to his warmth. She nodded her head, and tried to be as strong as him, to take comfort in his words, to have confidence in his reassuring hand. Ziva clamped her fingers down tight on his arm, and nodded again. "Okay?" he asked her, cupping her damp cheeks in both his hands, and she mouthed back a voiceless "Okay." Tony kissed her forehead, her temples. He opened his hands to kiss her cheeks, and through her tears, she turned to catch those lips. In his surprise, Tony paused.

When he pulled away, Ziva scowled, and asked, "Is it so bad that you will not kiss me?"

He searched her beseeching eyes, caught between his desire to kiss her and the impropriety of kissing her. But when she furrowed her brow, when her eyes wondered why he had hesitated, Tony relented and touched his lips to hers. And they were warm, and they were soft, and they held his in a supple embrace.

And it took his breath away.

Drawing away from her, Tony trailed his fingers over her skin, over her unkempt and beautiful hair, trying to reconcile this highly inappropriate display of his affection. Uncomfortable and rattled by the kiss, Tony defaulted to deflection. "See, now what you just did was called a bilateral, midline movement, and that's good. That's...that's great." And if he kept saying it, he'd believe this was the real reason he kissed her.

"I've always been a fast healer," she said, trying to match his positive outlook, but when she thought about the incision that sliced into her skin, when she tried to reconcile the fact that she had been in a coma for two weeks, the enormity of it overwhelmed her.

"Hey," Tony said, his voice soft and sure, "you're gonna be all right."

"Will you stay with me tonight?" she asked, fresh tears inching across her skin.

Tony quieted, understanding that none of his concerns amounted to anything in her frightening world. "Yes. Yes, I will. I'm not going anywhere."

"Thank you."

But perhaps she would indulge him this one admission. "I have missed you, Ziva."

"Then I am glad I am back," she whispered, closing her heavy eyes.

"Me, too."

"And I am safe."

"Yes, you are." Tony pulled up his chair, grasped hold of her hand in, for the first time, a reciprocal embrace, and hunkered down for the night.


	6. Chapter 6

I've never actually been on a neurological ward of a hospital, so I'm not sure if they have the chairs I'm describing, but I did just have my hair cut and they had one there. Hence, in my world what can be in a hair salon can also be in a hospital...

This is a long chapter, but an important one. Enjoy.

**If Ziva had been a character in a 1950s-era movie, waking from her coma would signify the end of the film.** The soaring music would underpin the joy of it all, and the credits would begin to roll. But, as Tony so often found, movies and the real world were very far afield.

Rather than continue that upward slope on the recovery scale, Ziva seemed to falter. Neurological storms rode along her brain, ominous, pernicious storms that left her weak, febrile and aching. One minute she would be lucid, the next stalled, cramped, like a television gone pixelated during sunspot activity.

"This will pass," the surgeon and the nurses assured him, but until it did pass, Ziva wasn't going anywhere.

Having been moved to a less restrictive floor, friends came and went, their visits predicated by her condition, which seemed to change from hour to hour. Abby would sit by her bed and do Ziva's nails, until the fumes choked her. Tim would ramble, asking the same things over and over-"Can I get you anything? When do they say you'll get out of here?"-as if he had memorized a series of appropriate questions, but had not counted on there being any answers. Offering quiet and a warm hand, Gibbs let the minutes gently glide by. And one day when she asked about her father, it was Gibbs who had pulled out his cell phone and had her call Eli.

A short conversation, quiet and in Arabic, but it left her calm, even smiling. She slept peacefully that afternoon, and no one was ever the wiser that a daughter needed her father, and a father needed to be needed.

One late evening, when the deep-winter sky was bald and trees were cast in stark silhouettes, when the nurses had strode in and out, when dinner items had been pirated away, and the surgeons had sauntered in, perfunctorily checking off notations and signing orders, and Tony had slumped in the bedside chair, mouth wide open, hands straggling over the side of the arms, Ziva lay uncomfortably in her bed. She tapped above and below her incision, a futile attempt at ameliorating the itch. She crushed shut her eyes and tried to concentrate away her discomfort, and when that didn't work, she growled.

"What?" Tony cried out, searching the room with sleep-blind eyes. "I'm here! What?"

"Go back to sleep," Ziva told him, although she hoped he wouldn't.

"No, no," he said, "I'm...I'm awake." Tony shook his head, scrubbed a hand over his face, and peered at his watch. "How long have I been asleep?"

"Perhaps an hour."

"You should have woken me," he said, rising from his seat. Stretching, awkwardly twisting free his tight back, Tony winced. "I could use a massage. You think you're up for giving me a little back rub?"

"When have I ever been up for that?" she snarled, wriggling in her bedding.

Tony chuckled-a return of cantankerous Ziva. Good. Good. "So, what's going on, Squirmy McSquirmison?"

Ziva ran her hands over her hair, then raked her fingers through it, finally lifting her head from the pillow to scrub her itchy scalp.

"Hey, careful there," Tony warned, reaching for her.

Ziva slapped her hands to the bed and sighed. "I have been in this bed too long. I need a shower. I need a long, hot bath. I need... I need to go home."

"Soon," he told her. A thought bubbled up in his head, and he sidestepped his way into her bathroom. It had been left, the reclining chair the nurses used to help Ziva bathe days earlier. Returning to her side, Tony began to fold up his sleeves. "I can't make all your wishes come true, not until you have written permission from your doctors," he teased, winking at her, to which she rolled her eyes, "but I can help you a little. Wanna get out of that bed? I'm your man."

Ziva stared at him, searching his eyes for answers encased within the obvious care that existed there. "Where are we going?" she asked, drawing the sheets off, and when she did, Tony found her gown to be riding much too high on her body.

And although he had seen her naked body before, and although he had become accustomed to seeing her comatose body, lacking in any self-consciousness, Tony was uncomfortable. They were partners, friends, maybe he had even wanted more, but there was a line of intimacy that wasn't to be crossed. "Um..." he began, averting his eyes, but when Ziva neither noticed nor rectified the situation, Tony reached out, carefully, discretely pulled down her gown while pulling back the sheets. One awkward moment down, Tony wiped sweat from his brow and lowered her bedrail.

"You have not told me where we are going," Ziva reminded him.

Tony proffered his hand to her, and said, "Did you ever see 'Out of Africa?' Meryl Streep, Robert Redford."

"Yes. Many years ago." She kept her wondering eyes on him, but gave him her hand.

"Good movie. Great landscapes," he said, assisting her to a seated position. He gathered her weak legs and draped them over the edge of the bed-a precarious venture while tiny crystals floated through her inner ear. "How do you feel?"

"Oi," she grumbled, adjusting her grip on his hand.

"You wanted to get out of bed."

"So I did." Ziva closed her eyes, acclimating to this new position. "What were we talking about?"

"'Out of Africa.' Redford and Streep and one glorious flight in a biplane."

"My memories of Africa are different."

Tony stopped his work and looked into her pained expression. Of all the things that could have been lost in the accident, why not this set of memories? "Mine, too," he whispered. Ziva opened her eyes, and for a brief, sad moment, they were in Somalia.

"Anyhow," Tony continued, abruptly changing the subject, pulling her IV pole out from the wall, gathering her robe from the end of the bed, "the two of them, Karen and Denys, are on safari, and he offers to wash her hair. Recites lines from 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' to her." Tony quirked a smile, continuing their preparations. "She makes fun of him for skipping verses."

"I would, too," Ziva said, nauseated from the whirl within her head.

"Yes, you would," Tony said. He pulled the bags down from her IV and wove them through the arm of her robe, hung them back up, and helped Ziva slide her arm through the sleeve, all the while carefully watching her expression for signs of further discomfort. Her other arm through the robe, and Tony slid it over her shoulders. She looked so small, so broken. Sitting next to her, Tony rubbed her back, and whispered into her ear, "You okay?"

From somewhere deep within, Ziva found the strength to sit up a little straighter, to feign that she was well, that she was whole. She pulled the edges of the robe in, and nodded. "Yes," she said, and glanced at him. "Yes. I am fine."

Tony didn't believe her for a minute, but he'd grant her this one grace. "So. Where were we? Oh, yeah," he continued, tying the robe's belt in a loose knot, "Redford finishes washing her hair, and she looks up at him. Just looks up. Smiles." A lopsided grin spread across Tony's face, and he said, "I swear to god, I almost fell in love with the man myself. Ready?"

Ziva cupped her brow in her hand, the room before her oscillating. "I am not sure if this is..."

"It'll be fine," he said. "Besides, the doc says you need to walk."

"And you are such a follower of orders."

"When it comes to your well being, yes," he said, assisting her to her feet. "And, we're off."

Small, tentative steps. Tony posted her up, an inch at a time. She closed her eyes to stave off the nausea, and said, "I still am unsure where we are going."

"Can't take you on safari, my little Blixen," Tony said, carefully shuffling into the bathroom. He guided her toward the chair and made sure her IV pole was safe. "But I can wash your hair."

While Tony pulled towels from the rack, Ziva looked up at him, her eyes full of wonder and appreciation. "You would do that for me?"

"Of course I would," he said, padding the edge of the sink with a towel, another draped over her neck. Tony cupped the ridge of her head, and slowly leaned the seat back. "How ya doin'?"

Her skull ached. It pounded with each movement, but the warmth of his hand was comforting, a salve. She watched the confidence in his movements, and allowed him to control the situation. Water began to stream behind her, and then Tony was gathering her hair, combing it away from her forehead, his soft fingers lingering against her skin. His gaze fell upon her dark, clear eyes, and Tony knew this was important, that she trusted him, that he could bring her at the least a modicum of repose. It was important. Ziva folded her hands in her lap, and simply relaxed.

"Tell me if it's too hot," he said, and soon liquid sunshine was running over her hair and against her skin, rivulets that tickled warm, that filled her with heat and breath. She closed her eyes, and her lips parted, embraced by the welcome sensation. A glow suffused her body-skin, bones, marrow and all.

Palming her head in his hand, careful of the seismic fault of an incision clearly visible, Tony asked, "Feel good?"

Still the silken water continued, and Ziva smiled. "Yes. Yes."

"I'm glad," he said, soaking her long hair. When an errant stream crawled toward her eye, Tony dabbed at it. Smiled.

"Why have you never washed my hair before?" she asked, and Tony stopped. Her brow creased. Ziva searched his eyes, and asked, "Have you, and I just do not remember?"

Was it the fear he saw, or was it the odd question that made Tony shiver? he wondered. Such a strange question to ask. Under what other circumstances would he have ever washed his partner's hair? So, when confused, chuckle. "No, I don't think I ever have."

This seemed to calm her, and Ziva closed her eyes again, and Tony once again aimed the nozzle toward her scalp. "Well, you are very good at it."

Tony turned off the water momentarily and combed his fingers through her drenched tresses. "Had a barber once, old school. Gave these great scalp massages before he'd cut your hair."

Luxuriating in his ministrations, Ziva simply sighed. "That would be wonderful."

"Yeah, well, you're barking up the wrong masseuse here, sister," he said, switching hands. "I'm gonna be honest with you-just looking at those divots in your skull kind of squicks me." Ziva laughed, and Tony grinned. "I have this fear that I'd be in the middle of a massage and one of my fingers would poke right through. Like pie crust. This, by the way, is also the reason I don't do well with babies." A well-placed shudder was added to his commentary, and Ziva laughed again. Her eyes sparkling with humor, she began to focus on his when something shiny caught her attention. Dangling from a thin, gold chain, close to his skin, Ziva gasped at the sight of her Star of David. Her tenuous fingers reached for it, just touching the charm. Tony had almost forgotten its presence, and was suddenly awash in concern. Would she be angry that he, a gentile, had been wearing it? Was it sacrilegious? He had to say something, but what?

"Oh, that. Yeah, well," he began, trying to see where her fingers met the Star, "I just thought I'd wear it until you can."

Ziva flattened her hand against his chest, and said, "Thank you, Tony."

Tony shrugged, nodded, gave her hair one last rinse. "Feel better now?"

"Yes."

"Well, good. I aim to please." He wrung out her hair the best he could, pinched the towel to dry her ears, just like the old barber had done to him so many years ago. Wrapping a dry towel around her head was a more cumbersome ordeal, but he managed, twisting the ends, bringing the twist to rest across her chest, like a long, white ponytail. "Here we go," he said, raising her seat, an inch at a time. Ziva grasped hold of the arm rests, readying herself for the pain that was sure to come. Changes in positions were difficult. She hoped this would not be a permanent addition to her life.

Once she was upright, once the storm front of discomfort passed over, Tony took her by the hands and carefully, slowly helped her to her feet. "Good?" he asked, moving to her side, to press one hand to her hip.

"Fine," she said, her IV pole leading the way.

Tony quirked a smile, glanced at her and then away. "So this is what you'd look like as a blond."

"What are you talking about?" she asked, shuffling through the room.

"The towel wrapped around your head," he teased. "Like a platinum-blond-"

"Do not say Jessica Alba," she warned.

"I was going to say Natalie Portman, but JA works, too," Tony said, lost for a minute in both women's dark, sensual eyes. But when he felt Ziva pause, he came back to the present. Tony hunted through the multiple layers of emotion in her eyes, and asked, "What is it?"

"I... I do not want to get back into that bed," she whispered, bashful for reasons she could not fathom. How often had she asked for such comfort? "Can we... Perhaps we can..."

"You want to sit for a while?"

Tension released from her body, and she nodded. "If that is not too much to ask."

"Not at all."

Tony turned to the chair and began to lower Ziva into it. "No," she said, maintaining her footing. "I want to..." she began, unable to look at him. She swallowed hard, and took a deep breath. "I would _like_ to sit with _you_."

Tony blinked, squinted. "Oh. Okay." How often had Ziva made such requests? Never. So, he smiled, denied any inkling that said this was odd, and said, "Yeah, why not?"

So many things to keep track of-holding her up while he sat down, not jostling her, watch the edge of chair, the edge of the table, try to figure out why she wanted to sit with him, keep her IV line safe. Lower her into his lap. Try not to think about Ziva in his lap... "Um, a little to the...um, to the left. No, left. Yeah, there." He wrapped an arm around her back, scooped her legs up and over the arm of the chair. Ziva nestled in, shy at first, tugging at her robe. Tony adjusted his seat, and tried to make sure she was covered and warm. She didn't like to be cold. Never had. "You comfortable?" he asked. His own answer, of course, would have been "No. Not uncomfortable, per se, but not exactly relaxed." However, perhaps this was the price to pay for healthy Ziva-A little on the familiar side, a little more demonstrative than he was used to, but awake. So, he simply held her, and tried to pretend it was as natural as talking to her across the office, hidden behind her computer monitor, her long fingers entwined under her chin, flirting with him, which, of course, it was nothing like that.

As for Ziva, hers was a strange combination of need and discomfort. She tried to chalk it up to the brain injury, this feeling of the unfamiliar, but her rational side said this was entirely appropriate. _Esterkha'a_, she told herself. "Yes, I am quite comfortable. You?"

He cocked his head to catch her eyes and chided her with a scowl. "How could I not be comfortable? Who wouldn't be comfortable with a woman like you in his lap?" Ziva tapped his cheek, and chuckled. She rested her head against his shoulder and breathed in the scent of him, so familiar, of shaving cream and a day's worth of work. This alone brought her comfort and the sense of home. Her fingers slid down and touched the gold charm sheltered in his chest hair.

"Tell me about the house you said you would build for me," she said, staring off, her fingers tracing the lines and points of the Star.

Tony's brow creased. "I said I'd build you a house?"

"Yes, when we were stuck in that cargo container in Norfolk. Do you not remember?"

He laughed, hooked his arm across her legs, and said, "Ha, yeah. Nothing wrong with your memory. Yeah, I guess I remember saying that."

"So, tell me about this house," she said, wedging her hand between her cheek and him.

"Okay, well," he began, envisioning what such a house might look like, and finding the image was all too clear in his mind, "it would be outside the city, on the train line. It would be on a plot of land surrounded by trees and green, cool grass."

"And the house itself?" she asked, her voice becoming quiet, immersed in this fantasy. "How many bedrooms?"

"Oh, um, four or five. A large, open kitchen where you could cook all day," he said, listening to her breathe, caressing Ziva's arm where his supported her body. "And a huge dining room, full of wine glasses and old hardwood. You'd put on great dinner parties, and the house would always be filled with laughter and friends."

"It sounds perfect," she whispered.

"Yes, it does," he said, laid a hand against her covered hair, and kissed her forehead, without thinking, without wondering if he should. So much had changed, some things for the better, others for the worse. Priorities shift, wide-open wounds heal, others are created. Holding Ziva in his lap, her soft breath against his skin, her attenuated body curled next to his, Tony closed his eyes and hoped that he would remember this moment forever. This time of quiet, of dreams. Of devotion and tenderness.

Ziva's eye became heavy with sleep, so she closed them and pictured a house, instead. "Tell me more."

And he did. He described the line of the house, the graceful entrances, the decor and the color. He described where they'd put the Christmas tree and the Menorah, the mezuzah and the televisions. As he spoke, she melted into sleep. When it was apparent that she no longer heard the details, Tony continued on silently, reverently, entering rooms and filling them with memories only he would know.

"Tony?" came the whisper.

"Yes, Ziva."

"I love you."

With a start, his eyes flew open. His chest tightened. The room's air was gone. "Wh...what?"

In a voice as soft and quiet as mauve silk, she said again, "I love you."

"I..." he whispered, blinking.

But the words were snagged in his throat. Maybe it was the shock of hearing them from her. Maybe it was his inability to trust the veracity of her words, too easily dismissed by present circumstances.

Maybe he trusted them too much, and present circumstances were the catalyst for such truths.

Three simple words. It had taken a lifetime to get to this moment. It had taken the death of colleagues, of family, of friends, of enemies, of relationships; dozens of countries had come and gone, their different and complex languages all flowing from her lips-a thing he always found astounding-and here were three perfectly understandable words, spoken in his own language, and Tony couldn't wrap his head around them.

"I..." he said, but nothing more. When he looked down at her and listened to her breathe, Tony knew he had missed his chance. She was asleep. In his arms, and he had missed the one opportunity to tell her what he had wanted her to know for longer than he could remember. What his heart yearned to say. Three simple words...

Small blessing, then, that a nurse came in and helped Tony to ease Ziva back into bed. Her eyes flickered open, and Tony whispered that he'd be back. Later. "Ziva, I..." Could he take the chance now, while she was in that etherized world? No. Not now. Maybe never.

And then he'd know regret.

But when?

After all the weeks he had spent by her side, Tony knew the nightly routine, and so he stole away from her room, down the corridors he could traverse with his eyes closed, which, for all intents and purposes, might have well been. Half-blind with fatigue, his mind a jumble of thoughts and tumbling questions, Tony lumbered through the halls, down the elevator, into the main lobby, and out the front doors, where the brisk evening air slapped him back to awareness. He rushed a hand over his face, and still her words came to him-

"I love you."

Tony shoved his fists deep in his pockets, pinched his shoulders to his ears, his chin to his chest, and began to tremble. "Jesus, Ziva..." he said, the words ghosting out from him in icy clouds.

Maybe, he thought, she had said it in that casual way they had always tossed around the phrase- "Yeah, but I say it with love." "You are Tony DiNozzo, the class clown, and that is why we love you." Maybe it was synonymous with thank you to Ziva. After all, he rationalized, they'd been through a lot together, and sometimes feelings get confused, muddied and muddled after the years.

"That's not it," he said to no one. "God, that's not it."

He sat hard on the bench outside the automatic doors. He couldn't go back in there, not yet, not while her words and his lack thereof strangled and paralyzed him. So he hunkered down and tried to untangle the cords that were knotted tight in his gut.

What if he had told her the truth, told her that he loved her, more deeply than he cared to admit? Was love that complicated? Or was it that simple? It couldn't be simple. Simple didn't hurt. Simple didn't open you up wide, where a cold wind whipped through you, and you, arrogant and naive, braced yourself against it, begging for more. For that one chance in a lifetime when two dark eyes set in a heart-shaped face would look up at you and say, "I love you."

A car horn blared, and then another, and Tony was ripped from his ruminations. His fingers were stiff from the cold, and he glanced at his watch. The nurse would be finished with Ziva by now, and she would be fast asleep for the night. He would go to her room, retrieve his coat, and he would leave. He would go home, pour a drink, maybe three, and he would put it all away-her words, the keening of his soul for those words to be heard, just once more, and to be spoken. To be received.

He would put it all away, and hopefully when he returned in the morning, Ziva would have forgotten that in the transitory gloaming she had been so foolish as to display her vulnerability.

He got as far as her door before he turned back.

Two hours and half a black coffee later, Tony slogged back to her room, undone and depleted.

So, when he entered her room and padded toward his belongings, he endeavored to make his way through the darkened area using only the silvery moonlight to guide him. Passing her bed, Tony was relieved to find that she was asleep. Relieved, and disappointed. He grabbed his coat, and his keys tumbled from the pocket, clattering against the linoleum floor. Scuttling to retrieve them, Tony winced and glanced back to see if he had awaken her.

Lying in the ethereal light of the moon, curled on her side, a whisper of a figure under thin bedding, Ziva quietly watched him. Her skin was the color of rain, and her eyes were two dark, shining jewels, haunting him with their silence and insistence.

Tony blinked, rested his coat and keys back on the day bed, and moved to her. He lowered the bedrail and sat on the edge of her bed. The nurse had removed the towel from her hair, had even braided it to one side for her comfort. Tony drew the blanket up over her cool shoulder, brushed the back of his fingers against her temple, and whispered, "Hey."

"Hey."

His brow creased. Lines deep with melancholy radiated from his eyes. Tony said, "Go back to sleep. It's really late."

Freeing her hand from beneath the sheets, she placed it palm-up on his knee and waited for him to fill it, which he did. "You should go home and sleep, as well," she told him.

"I will." He studied her features, the rosebud lips, the fine nose, the dark brow line. He traced her widow's peak with his finger, lay his hand over her scar, not to obscure it, but to accept it as part of the whole. He offered her an unconvincing smile.

"Tony?"

"Yes, Sweet Cheeks?"

"Will you bring me my ring tomorrow?"

"What ring is that?"

"My ring. The one you gave me," she said, the bruised smudges beneath her eyes advertising her exhaustion.

Tony rifled through any memory he had of Ziva's jewelry and of any gifts he may have given her. She had to be confused, he decided, and remembered one unremarkable ring in the bag of personal belongings he had been given the day she had arrived at the hospital. It must be the one she's talking about, he thought. "Yeah. Yeah, I'll bring it."

"Thank you."

Before he could talk himself out of it, Tony whispered, "Ziva?"

"Yes?"

He grasped her hand in his, ran his thumb over her fingertips, and swallowed back the fear he knew would be present in his words. Fearful or not, he had to know. "Tell me you love me."

She searched his stormy eyes, and hers became clouded with concern. "I do. I love you, Tony."

Clearing his throat, he asked, "How do you know?" his voice cracking on the last word.

A ridge formed between her brow, seeing his chin tremble like that, how his eyes narrowed, and she said, "I just do. It is one of the only parts of my life that is clear to me. Why do you ask?"

He nodded and tried to smile. Nodded again. "I just needed to hear you say it," he whispered, and then he thought perhaps he would find the strength to go a little further. "Ziva?"

"Yes?"

He weighed the cost of such words, and dismissed the potential disaster. "I love you, too. You know that, right?"

"I know," she said as her eyes slid shut. Simple. Easy.

Tony leaned into her, kissed her cheek, her forehead. He pressed his warm lips above and below her scar, the short hairs tickling him. She reached one long arm around his neck, and turned toward him, drawing him closer, and he slid his arms beneath her, drawing her closer. His hand lay flat against her warm back, all ribs and nubby spine, and he raised her from her bed and held her to him, where he cradled her in his arms, whispering his love for her, pouring all that was in his heart from his lips into her ear.

"Yes," she would whisper, frail and barely awake. The soft pads of her fingers tracing powder-light lines across his neck. "Yes, my love..."

He stroked her hair, kissed her slumbering features, and wished her to dream of a life full of time, and of warmth, and of peace. A life together, in a house they would build.

Still he held her, rocking back and forth, until she no longer whispered her consent. Until his voice was sore, his lips dry. Tony lay her back in her slumbering position, covered her with the coarse blanket, kissed her one last time, and rose from her bed. Reaching for his coat, he thought he heard her say something, so he turned and asked her to repeat it.

"My ring," she whispered.

"I know," he told her. He draped his coat over his arm, placed his keys in his pocket, and watched her lips forming more words. "What was that?" he asked, bending toward her.

"My gold band," she breathed.

"I know."

"My wedding ring."

"I know," he said, grasping her hand to assure her he understood. "Your- Wait. What? Which ring?"

But she was asleep, her hand slack in his.

"Wedding ring?" he said, searching for an answer in her listless features.

And then, a week's worth of words came back to him, a box full of clues and evidence that he had never thought to piece together- "Take me home." "Will you not kiss me?" "I love you." "My wedding ring."

He stumbled away from her, dropped his coat to the ground and crushed his skull in his hands. Turning away from her, Tony folded over, fingers knotted in his hair, and heard the hammering of his heart. It had all been a mistake, a terrible by-product of her head injury. The way she looked at him; the way she so familiarly reacted to him; the way she turned to him for answers about her life that only a spouse would know. But he did know, and that's what made it worse, that he had fueled the ruse.

His knees buckled, and he crumpled over the day bed. How could he have not seen it? "Oh, my god," he said, over and over, part fear, part prayer. How could he have been such a fool?

"Mr. DiNozzo?" came the voice of the nurse, and when her hand touched his trembling back, Tony flinched. "Are you okay?"

In a panic, Tony scrambled to his feet, for his coat, and not for an explanation. He pressed a hand to his mouth, and said, "I gotta go." And he left.

**Even after all the years he had worked there,** Tim could never get used to the middle-of-the-night calls. He slapped his hand to his bedside table, brought the phone close enough to his eyes to be able to see the caller ID, and sighed. Touching the display, Tim brought the phone to his ear, and said, "Yes, Tony..."

"Hey, Probie. I'm outside your door. Let me in."

Tim sat up in bed and scowled, rubbed the heel of his hand into his eye. "It's 2 AM."

"Don't you think I know that, McGee! That's why I'm calling you and not pounding on your door. Come on!"

Tim ripped the bedding from his legs, made sure he was appropriately clothed, and stomped through his apartment.

Tony waited, his hands pressed to either side of the door. A clatter of locks and chains, and the door swung open. "Thanks," he said, patting Tim's chest as he slid by.

"Come on in, DiNozzo," Tim groused, closing the door behind the presumptuous guest. "I was just thinking now would be a swell time for a guest."

Tony looked around the clutter of Tim's apartment, the milk crates, the cords, the books, the multitude of computer parts, the conceptual, stylish assortment of pragmatic furniture. "Ikea much, Timmy?"

Tim huffed, dug his fists into his hips, and said, "You know, if you could just wait five more hours, we could do this at the office. In five more hours, Tony, you could make fun of me all you want."

"I'm sorry, Tim," Tony said, and by the tone of his voice, Tim thought he actually meant it.

Taking a deep breath, Tim closed his eyes and began again. "How's Ziva?"

"Oh, you know," Tony said, glancing back at his peeved friend. "She has good days and bad days. Today was a... Ha, today was interesting."

"In what way?"

Tony picked up a copy of "Wired" magazine from the table and let it fall back to the surface. "She thinks we're married."

Tim blinked. "Who?"

"Ziva."

Rolling his eyes, Tim attempted to further suss out the random message. "Yeah, I... _WHO_ does she think is married?"

"Us."

"Ziva thinks you and I are married?"

"What?" Tony said, spinning on his heels, pulling a face somewhere between confusion and contempt. "No!" he growled. "Us! Me and Ziva! Stay with me, McGee!"

"Oh," Tim said, sitting heavily in his computer chair. "Oh, well, then, fine."

"Fine?"

"I mean in comparison..."

"Always looking on the bright side, aren't ya, McIdle," Tony scowled.

"Okay," Tim said, closing his eyes and gesturing for Tony to slow down, "let's start over." But when a further, rational question didn't form, he simply asked, "What's going on?"

Tony, worn out, any caffeine that might have coursed through his system all but gone, slumped into the low Swedish chaise, his feet straddling the sides. He took a deep breath, put his head back and tried to figure out a sensible way to begin. "I should have known it was a mistake days ago. Ziva would never be so..." He squinted, as if understanding the events required such a scrutiny. "...so open. So..." But the words weren't there. He swallowed hard against the bitterness that lay at the back of his throat. "But when she woke up, I was just so damn happy. I let my guard down. Blinded by...relief. By..."

Shaking his head, trying to follow Tony's obfuscated explanation, he asked, "Okay. Wait. How do you know she thinks you're married?"

"She asked me to bring her her wedding ring," Tony said, hearing Ziva's voice still in his mind.

Tim could see the obvious distress this caused his friend, and so he offered a plausible explanation. "Are you sure it's not one of those 'lost in translation' moments? I mean, she did have a fairly significant brain injury, and Ziva's English is, well, you know..." he hemmed and hawed, hoping Tony would glom on to the explanation. "Is it possible she's talking about another wedding ring?"

"Nope," Tony interjected. "She means the one I gave her."

"But, you... didn't... I mean, you didn't..."

"No, McGee, I didn't give her a ring. But somewhere in that brain of hers, somewhere between falling in the shower and waking up in the ICU, Ziva decided she was..."

"Mrs. Very Special Agent Dinozzo."

"Nice," Tony said, glowering. "Thanks for that."

"What did you tell her?" Tim asked, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. "When she asked for her ring, what did you say?"

Tony shrugged, and said, "She fell asleep. I didn't have a chance to explain."

"Wow," Tim said, rocking back in his chair, cradling his chin in his hand, trying to work out the problem in his mind. "Wow. Well, you gotta tell her."

"I know," Tony said, scraping his hands across tired eyes. "I know."

"So what are you going to do?"

Tony lay back in the chair, his hands grasping the headrest. He let out a lungful of air in a deflated whoosh. "Which scenario do you want to hear," he asked, closing his eyes, still seeing her in the grey light, all dark eyes and silence, "'cause I've been through them all?"

"She should know the truth, Tony."

"Yeah," Tony whispered, dropping his hands to his lap, surrendering to his fatigue. "Yeah, she should."

"But..."

"When I'm with her and she's struggling for whatever reason, she...she holds out her hand to me and...and this peace..." Tony searched the room with blind eyes as his chest skittered with tension. How had he not seen it before? It was a quagmire of compassion and propriety, of misplaced memories and knotted histories. In some sense, it was a fantasy come true, borne of a nightmare. Crushing shut his eyes, Tony sucked in a labored breath and tried to go on. "She says my name, and... and I..." Suddenly, he was sitting bolt up, poised at the edge of the chair, his eyes wild with anguish, his jaws clenched, spitting out the words. "I swear to god I never asked for this! I swear I had no idea what was in her head. You gotta believe, Tim, that I would never allow her to just keep thinking something like this if I'd known."

"I believe you, Tony," Tim said, peering into his friend's bloodshot eyes.

And then he was breathing hard, grasping for answers and absolution in Tim's sympathetic expression. He clamped his lips together, veins surfacing on his neck and temples.

Tim could see he'd only been made privy to part of the story. He heard Gibbs' voice in his head saying "a little confession is good for the soul," and so he said, "But there's more, isn't there?"

Holding fast to Tim's focus, Tony's brow creased, and the words dammed up in his throat like branches of trees racing down a swollen, flooded narrows. "She told me she loves me." Tim couldn't speak. He could only blink and feel his heart stammer. "I was holding her in my arms, and she..."

"You were holding her?"

Unfazed, Tony continued on. "...and she told me she loved me. I tried to say something, but she fell asleep, so I left. For a while. But I went back and I asked her..." He shook his head, groped to find some way to make it sound better than it was. "I tried it on."

"Tried on...?"

"What it would be like," Tony whispered, his cloaked vision sliding off Tim's face, into memory. "To do the Disney version. The romantic-comedy version."

"And?"

"And it was terrifying."

"Yeah, I suppose it could never-"

"No," Tony said, his hard focus once again on Tim. "That's not what I mean. I held her, and I imagined what life with Ziva would be like, and...and and it was perfect. And it was... And it was..." He pulsed throbbed in his veins, and all he could do was stare at Tim, shake his head. "But I didn't know. I had no idea she thought we were... we were married. If I had known..." Dizzy with the torment of his memories, Tony dropped his head into his hands and ratted his fingers in his hair. "It was a mistake. God, it was a terrible mistake. She's confused, and I made it worse."

A thought occurred to Tim, one he wasn't sure would bring relief or further pain. Nonetheless, he offered it up. "Tony, did you stop to think that maybe, maybe there's a kernel of truth in there?"

"What the hell are you talking about, McGee?"

"It's no secret you two care about each other," Tim said, which didn't do anything to alter Tony's mood. "And, if you think about it, she didn't wake up believing she was married to me. Or to Gibbs, Ducky or Palmer, for that matter." Tony's brittle hold on his hair ceased at that, and his head drooped farther. He kneaded the back of his neck, and covered his hot ears with trembling hands. Tim leaned toward him and gave Tony the words he thought his friend was too afraid to reveal. "You love her, Tony. You always have."

"How do you know?" Tony asked, seeking out the answer in Tim's sure focus. "Maybe it's because she's been sick and I was feeling sorry for her. Maybe it's because she's lonely. Hell, I'm lonely! Maybe it's-"

"I was in that cell in Somalia, too, Tony," Tim reminded him, which quieted Tony. "This isn't a mistake. You love her. And she loves you. This isn't a mistake."

Tony let the words wash over him, trying to breathe. He crumbled back into the chair, staring at the ceiling with eyes that burned. His lips quavered, and his mind raced. He tried without success to dislodge the knot in his throat. "What am I gonna do, Tim?"

"I have no idea," Tim admitted. He stared at his friend, at his disheveled and distraught form and spirit, and knew one thing, that Tony only needed time.

He stood up, went to his closet and pulled out a blanket. Returning to his living room, Tim placed it on Tony's chest, who barely registered the gift. Tim gave Tony's shoulder a sympathetic pat, turned off the light, and left him to his burden.


	7. Chapter 7

**When he woke in the morning, with a blanket draped over him**, still wearing his coat, Tony's entire body ached. From head to feet, there was a bothersome, insistent throb, and all he could do was lay still, lick his chapped lips, stare at the ceiling and try to come up with a plan.

Tim had left earlier, Tony seemed to remember, something about biometric technology and AFIS in the MTAC, ASAP. Tony hadn't really listened.

His first plan of action-find Tim's aspirin. That accomplished, Tony stared out the window of his friend's apartment, the bright sun burning into his tension headache. He peeked at his watch-8:22. Ziva would be questioning where he was.

Tony had some questions himself.

Ninety minutes later, still achey but showered, shaved and sufficiently caffeinated, Tony had stopped to talk to Ziva's doctor and rehabilitation specialist. "Is this normal?" he asked, and they used words like "retrograde amnesia, but not really," "neuroplasticity" and other multisyllabic jargon that Tony wasn't the least interested in. He just wanted an answer to his questions, like "When should I tell her the truth? I mean, come on, at some point she'll realize there aren't any wedding pictures sitting around."

It was decided that, if it didn't clear up on its own, she should be told, slowly, carefully, a little at a time. But until she had fully recovered from her physical injuries, the focus was to be on her condition.

"Well, yeah," Tony said, rolling his eyes, hoping for a better answer than that.

Standing in the family room on Ziva's floor, Tony paced, practicing what he might say to her, how he would broach the subject. "Remember in the spring when Prince William and Kate Middleton got married? Yeah? Okay, so, they did; we didn't," or "Remember how angry your dad was when he found out I married his daughter? Yeah, me either."

But every time he tried to find the words, the hard truth was that he was afraid. Afraid that this fantasy of hers included her love for him, and could he afford to throw that away?

Standing alone in the quiet room, Tony decided he was an amalgamation of fuses-some burnt out and hollow, and some sparking beyond their load.

Still, she had to be told.

He slogged his way to Ziva's room, nodding a salutation to her nurse at the door.

"Oh, Mr. DiNozzo," she said, adjusting the stethoscope around her neck, "Ziva's having a rough morning. Just thought you should know?"

"Rough? Why? How?"

"Vertigo is really bad today. We have a call in to have the ENT come by," she said. "I'm on my way to go get her some anti-emetics."

"Should I... I mean should I come back?"

"No," the nurse told him, touching his arm. "Just...be aware. She may be in for a bumpy ride."

"Which means I'm in for a bumpy ride," Tony said, and the nurse nodded her tacit agreement.

Leaving him behind, Tony watched her truck through the hall, wondering what was in store for him inside Ziva's room. Ziva had been dizzy before. Hell, just the night previous he had to hold her up to walk the short distance to the bathroom.

But when he stepped inside, when he found her planted uncomfortably in the chair, one hand strangling the arm rest, the other nailed to her forehead, Tony tossed his coat in the corner and crouched down in front of her, placing his hand over hers.

"Guess I showed up right on time for the floor show," he whispered, taking in the ashen pallor of her skin, the way her jaw contracted, her temples bulged. "How ya doin'?"

"I do not feel at all well," she said.

"Can I get you anything?"

"No, just..." she said, pulling her hand out from his, motioning for him to move away. Tony was about to object to her insistence when he heard her breathe harshly through her nose, heard her try to swallow, watched her hand move to her mouth, her chin bob up and down.

He was able to rush the trash can under her moments before Ziva vomited.

It was violent and frightening-yet another moment he hoped to forget. Her body shook with pain and expulsion, and the grotesque sound of her retching and cries were serrated knives against his nerves.

"You're all right," he kept whispering to her, while his own hand, steadier than he ever thought possible, cupped her forehead. "I got ya..."

When it was over, Tony jogged to the bathroom and turned on the tap. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and it jarred him-dark circles, deep-etched lines around his eyes and mouth. The weeks had aged him. How had he not noticed? Until now. He grabbed hold of the sink, waiting for the water to turn warm, and lowered his spinning head, just for a moment. It was too much.

He heard her retch again, so he took a deep breath and marshaled his strength, wet a washcloth and turned off the water. Tony rushed to Ziva, who was still panting with the can between her legs, and wiped down her brow and neck. When he was sure the sickness had abated, Tony pushed the receptacle aside, and cleaned her face, her hands.

"I hate this," she cried, her hands trembling in her lap.

"Here," he said, palming the back of her head and holding a tissue to her nose, "blow."

She looked him over for a moment with tear-filled eyes, and then she did as she was told. "Ow," she moaned, the pressure from her injury coupled by a nausea-induced headache. Tony threw the used tissue into the trashcan, and Ziva ran her hand under her nose while she continued to weep. "I do not want you to see me like this," she choked out, masking her face and humiliation with her shaking hand.

"Like what?" he asked. He brushed back her hair, tangled and unkempt, from her blotchy face.

"Like this! Like this!" she cried. "Sick and pathetic."

He gave out an insincere chuckle, to show how unafraid he was of her condition, to beat down his own fear at seeing her so sick and pathetic. He said, "I seem to remember a certain night of Irish Car Bombs. One of us held the other's hair in the parking lot. I don't think I ever thanked you for that."

"Do not make fun of me, Tony."

"I'm not making fun of you." Then she looked up, all tears and crumpled brow, and Tony reached forward to kiss her hot cheek. Settling back, he dabbed at her tears, and told her, "You're gonna be okay, Ziva."

"Sometimes I wonder," she said, though her voice was thin and crackling, "if it would have been better if I had stayed in the coma."

Her words punctured him like an ice pick. "No," he said, trying to keep his message even and calm, "it would have been better if you hadn't been showering alone."

"Maybe it would have been better if I had never woken," she cried, scraping her chapped hands against her swollen eyes.

"Don't say that," he said, trying to keep in mind that she was tired. Yeah, well, so was he...

But in an explosion of frustration and pain, Ziva slapped her hands on the armrest and drilled into his eyes with her own, red-rimmed and wild. "Listen to me! You are not listening to me!"

"W-what do you want me to hear?" he asked, shocked and breathless with concern.

"I cannot stand this!"

"What can't you stand?"

"This," she said, her hands flying around her, her fingertips digging into her aching brow. "This! Why did this have to happen?"

"Ziva," he said, shaking his head, pulling her scrabbling hands away from her head, "calm down."

She ripped her hands from his, and growled, "I never asked for this!"

Losing what was left of his diminished patience, Tony sat back on his heels, and said, "Okay, you've had your little pity-party. Relax."

"No!" she roared. "Give me one reason it is better to have to live with this...this misery? One reason! One!"

His hands flew to her face, finding his nerves were just as frayed. His molten focus bore down on her. "Fine! You want one reason?" he demanded, his lips pulled tight against his teeth. "Here it is-I need you! Dammit, Ziva, I've been trying to figure out why this happened for weeks, and I've come to only one goddamn conclusion. Are you ready for it? There _is_ no reason for this! It happened! Fine! Whatever! Deal with it! But, if you can't figure out a way to get better for yourself, do it for me! Figure out a way, Ziva, because I can't do this without you!"

By the end of it, her trembling hands were clutched to his wrists, her watery eyes glued to his. Tears slid down her stippled skin, across her quivering lips. She sobbed, never breaking their connection, as if it grounded her to life, to hope.

And as his pulse raced inside his body, Tony blinked back at his own tears that he was ashamed had come so easily. Undone by it all-her injury, her convoluted and fabricated memory of their lives, her words-Tony shook his head, and whispered, "I can't do it, Ziva. I can't."

"I want to go home," she mouthed, unable to find a voice through her suffering.

"I know," he said, wiping away her tears. "I know. And I'll take you home. I promise. But you have to get better. You have to trust that you'll get better. Do you hear me, Ziva?"

She nodded, and collapsed into his embrace, where he held her, where he hoped his arms could do what his prayers could not-make her whole again.

When the nurse entered to administer the anti-emetics, Tony propped her up in her chair, and stepped aside. Rattled, once again left recovering, Tony stood next to her chair and turned away from Ziva, his fingertips brushing against her shoulder. A connection, tenuous but there.

"This should help," the nurse said, pushing a syringe full of medicine into Ziva's line.

"Thank you," Tony said over his shoulder. He washed a shaking hand over his face and listened to the nurse gather up the trashcan and the soggy washcloth. Listened as she deposited the used supplies into the haz-mat bin. Listened to his heart trouncing inside his chest.

Ziva's small hand reached up for his, and he grasped onto it. He wasn't sure who needed it more, but he would have bet dollars to donuts that it was him.

This would not be the day for the truth.

**Jethro Gibbs heard the front door open, and he heard the footsteps. **Heard the footsteps momentarily come to a stop above him in the kitchen. Still, he swept, something he liked to do at the end of a day, even if he hadn't been working on any new projects in weeks. It was important to keep your work area clean. It was also relaxing.

He didn't stop when he glanced over to find Tony DiNozzo's overpriced shoes trudging down the steps, but he did note that if Tony was in his house after hospital visiting hours, having not shown up at the base at all that day, well, this was going to be one of "those" conversations.

"You ever thought about building an entertainment room down here, Boss?" Tony asked, taking the last two steps.

"I did. There's the workbench. Over there's the planer. Highly entertaining," Gibbs said.

Tony handed his boss a beer, who put the broom aside to open the bottle. Brushing off a sawhorse, Tony plopped down and downed half the beer in one long gulp, which didn't go unnoticed by Gibbs. He waited for Tony to lower his drink, and when he did, said, "What brings you here, DiNozzo?"

Tony smacked his lips and looked over the clear bottle. "Got a question for you."

"Don't know if I have an answer," Gibbs told him.

"I'll take my chances," Tony said, and by the tone of his voice, by the low and defeated timbre of it, Gibbs decided to take a seat. He pulled a wooden stool off a hook where it had been hanging on the wall, placed it at the end of the workbench, and waited for Tony's next words. "When you were in a coma, did you remember anything?"

Gibbs wondered when Tony was going to get around to asking about his own experience with recovering from a head injury. He'd heard reports from the others that Ziva wasn't healing as quickly as they all thought she would. When Gibbs had visited her, he found Ziva to be frail, fragile, something he hated to see and was pretty sure she hated to have seen. So, he knew it was just a matter of time before Tony asked him. "Nope. Not a thing."

Tony nodded, took another swig of his beer, and asked, "How long was it before you really... I mean really put it all back together?"

Gibbs drank his beer and thought about it, about the months in Mexico, when his memories felt like a broken down box of jigsaw puzzle pieces, and those months after he came back, when he tried to cover up the fact that some of the pieces were missing. "Oh, I don't know. 'Bout six, seven months."

"Six months. Yeah, sounds about right," Tony said, finishing his beer while he stared into his own recollection of those days. He set the empty bottle down and reached up for Gibbs' bottle of Bourbon. "May need a chaser tonight, Jethro, if you don't mind," he said, blowing out a jelly jar.

"Have at it," Gibbs said, draining the rest of his beer.

Tony poured a shot, swirled it in the jar, and watched the legs slide back down the glass. Those fumes wafted up toward him, warning him that the imminent burn was worth the eventual numb.

While Tony drank, hissing as the amber liquid scorched a path down his throat, Gibbs got up and went back to his sweeping. "How's Ziva?" he asked.

Tony regarded him with a chuckle. He poured another drink, and said, "Oh, the same. Pain is getting a little better, but she's dizzy, feeling pretty miserable. Today was a, well, pretty interesting day, _and_ she thinks we're married." At that, Gibbs stopped sweeping, straightened to fully face Tony, and waited. Tony let loose a wholly inappropriate guffaw, and said, "Ha, did I, uh,... did I forget to tell you that one?" Gibbs narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips. "Yeah, so, Ziva thinks she and I are betrothed, which, ya know, is nutty as a Mounds Bar," Tony laughed, his feigned humor falling flat, and what was the point, he wondered, of pretending? He ground down on his emotions, lowered his strained eyes to the jar perched on his knee and its jigger full of drink, and hoped, god, he hoped Gibbs had some answers for him.

"What did you tell her?" Gibbs asked.

Tony swallowed the Bourbon because the sting it brought was nothing in comparison to the pain he would soon feel when he told Gibbs the truth. "Well, there's the problem. Retrograde amnesia, they call it."

"Yeah, I'm aware of it," Gibbs said, shifting his stance.

"Of course you are," Tony said. He placed the empty jelly jar on the workbench and fiddled with a few wood screws. "Her doctors told me it will clear up, over time, and the more important thing is to keep her calm."

"So, you haven't told her," he said, not disguising his disappointment.

"No, Boss," Tony said. "I haven't."

Gibbs stared long and hard at his agent before stepping toward him, pushing the broom into Tony's hand.

"Okay," Tony said, grabbing hold of the old push broom, "what am I supposed to do with this?"

Gibbs capped the Bourbon and set it back on the shelf. He grabbed the empty beer bottles, and said, "Sweep."

Watching Gibbs walk away from him, Tony called, "This your version of wax on, wax off, Boss?"

Ambling toward the steps, Gibbs said, "You might as well clean house if you're gonna play house."

As Gibbs disappeared at the top of the stairway, Tony looked over the broom. Couldn't hurt, he thought. He pushed the sawhorse out of the way, and began to sweep.

**He felt like Hamlet. Not the Olivier version, or the Gibson version. Mel Gibson as a blond? So not right.**

No, it was more the Kenneth Branagh version-less vexation, more uniformed indecision. Still a blond, but with better enunciation and clothes.

He had to tell Ziva the truth. There was no way around it.

If he tried to wait for the perfect time, it would never come. If he waited until she was well, until he was ready, and until the stars and moons and planets all aligned, Tony was pretty sure he'd find himself celebrating their third child's birthday, and all of a sudden Ziva would look across the table at him, cake-cutting knife in hand and murderous intent in her eyes.

"We're! Not! Married!" she'd growl.

"Oh. Right," he would try to tell her. "Did I forget to tell you that?"

He thought he'd spare their future children that particular memory of Mommy going all trained assassin on Daddy's ass.

So it was on that eighth day, when Tony had no reason to think it would be appreciably different from any other day, that he found Ziva dressed, standing in the bathroom, and brushing her hair.

"Well, look at you," he said, tossing his jacket on the bed and tacking his shoulder into the door jamb. "Somebody's been eating her Dannon Activia. I tell you-that Jamie Lee Curtis sure knows her digestive health."

She caught his reflection in the mirror, all cockeyed smile and wanton eyes, and continuing to attend to her hair. "Are you finished?" Ziva asked.

"I suppose," he said, pushing himself away from the door to stand directly behind her. Tony squinted at her image, and she glanced at him, a barely disguised twinkle in her eyes and on her lips. "Something's different," he said, lifting his chin in appraisal. "Can't quite put my finger on it, but...there's definitely something different about you." Ziva rolled her eyes and pretended she wasn't listening. "Oh, I know! Sure! There's a distinct lack of vomiting." A well-placed elbow found its way into Tony's solar plexus, and he folded. Ziva reached for a small jar of cream and dabbed moisturizer around her eyes.

When he had sufficiently recovered, Tony coughed, stood up as straight as he could with his hand pressed to his midsection, and decided a better place to stand was facing her, against the wall. "I see your strength is back."

"Some," she said. Ziva glanced at him sidelong, raking her fingers through her hair. "The truth is I am feeling...much better today."

"Yeah, I can see that," he said, his arms and legs crossed before him. Tony's eyes sparkled, and when he spoke, she tried not to smile. "What brought this on, not that I'm complaining?

"Today," Ziva said, squaring her shoulders, "I woke up feeling more like myself."

"Good."

"And," she went on, taking a quick peek at him, "I have made an important realization this morning."

Tony choked, regained his composure, and said, "Oh, yeah? What's that?"

She fumbled with her hands, first woven together, then out in front of her, nervous for what she was going to say.

"Ziva?"

She sighed, smacked her lips together, and said, "In the big scheme of things, it is...ridiculous. I cannot believe I didn't realize it before."

"Yeah, well," Tony began, bracing himself, "you've had a lot to deal with. Tell you the truth, I didn't realize it until a couple days ago."

Ziva's expression morphed into one of utter confusion, and she said, "This is something you have been thinking about, too?"

Choose your words carefully, he thought. "Well, I was kind of hoping we could talk about it today."

She screwed shut her eyes and raised an open hand between them. "Wait. I am talking about my hair. You have been concerned about my hair?"

His lips rounded, trying to come up with his next sentence, but all that came out was a coo, of sorts. "Oh. Uh, well, no." So much for communication skills. When in doubt, obfuscate. "I was... You know, now that you mention it, I was..." He pinched his lip with his fingers, blinked, and hoped she'd save him, which she didn't. "What about your hair?"

Her brow knit with bewilderment, Ziva said, "I was simply trying to tell you," and paused to gawk at him for a moment. Giving him the once over, she continued, "that if I part my hair on the right, I can practically cover my incision. Are you sure you do not need to lie down?"

"No, I'm fine," he told her, feeling as though he had just missed a bullet fired from point blank range. "So, um... um... What?"

Scowling at him one more time, Ziva combed her hair over from one side to the other, brushing it back with her long fingers, a gentle tilt to her head. And as she watched herself in the mirror, Tony found that he too was tilting his head, a goofy smile upon his lips. "There. See?" she said, motioning toward her reflection. "It is as if nothing has happened. I mean, I know a scar is on my head, but even I can hardly tell it is there."

Tony sighed, and said, "Kind of the ultimate combover."

Ziva laughed, which made Tony's smile broaden. "Yes, I suppose so. But," she added, turning toward Tony, "unlike Donald Trump, my hair will grow back."

"Yes, it will," Tony said, unable to take his eyes off her or to mask his contentment at seeing her vibrant and well. He shook his head, clucked his tongue against his cheek, and said, "Well, Agent David, you do look fetching."

Ziva caught his soft expression, and offered up her most demure smile. "Thank you, Tony."

"You," he said, sweeping back a loose strand of her hair, "are very welcome, Ziva."

Ziva stepped to him, placed one hand on his chest, and eyed his lips. "What is it you were thinking about?"

Tony watched her dark eyes dart over his lips, his skin, and wherever they touched, he felt that part of him bloom with color. "Just, uh, nothing, really. We can talk about it later."

"Are you sure?" she asked, swimming both arms over his shoulders.

"Oh, sure," he managed.

Then she kissed him, as tender and supple a kiss as he had ever felt. A visceral warmth blossomed inside them both, and the kiss deepened, still delicate, but yielding. One broad hand pressed to her lower back, the other looped in her hair. He knew he should stop, that this was tainted by a past that didn't exist, but it was so good. Beyond just the physical, base need that so often was the foundation of such expressions, this kiss was a communion of lives and of love, and of mutual respect, and because of that, Tony was all at once doused with guilt. He drew away from her lips, closed his eyes, and said, "You, uh, you should probably rest. Or, ya know, I should rest. Probably I should rest."

"Perhaps," she said, curling into the curve of his neck, her arms wrapping around him. The feel of his fingers caressing the back of her neck reminded her of how good life could be, how safe, how loving. But, she was ashamed that it also sparked a sense of something foreign, forbidden. On this road to regaining her life, Ziva decided she was going to have to expect many blank spots in her memory. The pragmatic thing was to accept them, fill them with "the now" and move on. Still, how often does one get to have their first kiss twice? Her lips spread into a smile, and she said, "Whenever I kiss you, it still feels... new."

"Yeah, I know the feeling," he said, biting his lip. _Tell her now..._

"I think that if this has been caused by the hematoma," she said, running her fingers down his spine, "then it is not such a bad thing,"

"I think that's a pretty sure bet," he said, shifting his hold to her shoulders. It was an opening, and he had to take it. "Ziva..."

She disengaged from him, concerned by his sudden change in tone, and said, "What? What is it?"

They were standing in the middle of a lavatory. He was about to potentially break her heart (and his, for that matter) while standing between a toilet and a sink. He couldn't do that to her, so Tony chuckled, grazed the soft blades of his fingers across her cheek, and said, "Did you ever notice we seem to have a lot of conversations in the john?"

Ziva let her focus slide across his lips again, over his jawline, and down his neck. "So it would seem."

"Why do you think that is?" he asked, taking up her hand, holding it to his heart.

She cocked her head to the side, and whispered, "Privacy, I suppose. The decided lack of traffic."

"Hmm," he said, dramatically staring off into the distance of the small bathroom. "I'm gonna have to go with mirrors. And great acoustics. And the soft lighting, obviously."

Ziva skimmed her nails across the underside of his chin, and said, "The sensuousness of running water."

Tony narrowed his focus and jutted forth his jaw, a decidedly delicious glint in his eye. Another time, another place, he would have paid the check and uncorked the champagne by now.

But this was Ziva, and it had been a combination of blood loss and compressed synapses that had brought her to this place, and he forced himself to remember that. So when she pressed toward him, he whispered in her ear, "Ziva?"

"Yes, Tony."

"Speaking of water, I gotta make some."

She stepped back with a start, laughed, and said, "I believe I have just been bladder-blocked."

"The term is..." he started, then chortled. Tony shook his finger at her, laughing, and said, "Oh, I see what you did there. Clever, Agent David. Clever. Now, if you wouldn't mind..."

Ziva dropped her hands from him, gave him one final lascivious inspection, and ambled out.

Tony lifted the toilet seat, untucked his shirt, and threw one hand to the wall and one to his eyes. "Oh, my god," he whispered, scrubbing his flushed skin. He shook his head, and tried not to think about what had just occurred.

Ziva, hearing the delay in action, smiled, knowing she had something to do with it. She waited for him outside the bathroom, leaning against the wall, inspecting her nails. Another subject projected itself into her memory, and she snapped her fingers. "Tony?"

"Ziva?" he said, finally relaxing enough to begin.

"Are you okay in there?"

"Been doing this a long time. I'll be fine."

She smiled, and went on. "There is something else I've been meaning to tell you."

Tony's head slumped. It was like living in a shooting arcade, he thought. "Can it wait until the business at hand is, well, out of my hand?"

Ziva chortled, and said, "Yes, I suppose it can."

"Thank you," he said, finishing his business. Zipped and buckled, Tony flushed and turned to wash his hands. Without asking permission, Ziva sauntered back into the bathroom and hooked her chin over his shoulder, sharing the mirror's reflection with him. Tony glanced at her, then yanked a few paper towels from the dispenser. "Yes? Can I help you?"

"I have good news, my little fuzzy butt," she said.

Touching up his hair, checking his sideburns, he said, "Kim Kardashian is returning my wedding gift?"

"Better," she said walking away from him, knowing he would follow. "My doctors are pleased with my recovery, and are releasing me either later today or tomorrow morning." She stopped and waited for his reaction, which was slow in coming. "Did you not hear me?"

"Yeah, yeah," he said, tossing the paper towel into the trashcan. His mind spun with what needed to be said and to be done. "Yeah, that's great."

Undaunted by his seemingly luke-warm reception of the news, Ziva went on. "Of course, I will still be taking outpatient rehab and therapy for a number of weeks, but this is very good news. _ I _am going _home_."

Tony stared at her. _Home_, he thought. _Which home did she think she was going to, mine or hers_?

"Tony? Am I not being clear? I'm going home."

"It's, uh," he tried, but still his mind sped away beyond him. When she frowned at him, he came back to himself. He smiled, but knew the time had come. "It's great. Really, great," he said. "Look, Ziva, I need to-"

His ringtone pervaded the room, and Ziva glanced at the phone on his belt, and said, "You _need_ to get that."

"Ha," Tony chuckled, the sweat beginning to form on his upper lip. He took his phone from its carrier, saw that it was Gibbs' number, and showed it to Ziva. "Yeah, guess I better take this."

Ziva raked her fingers across his back, which made him sweat all the more, and left him to his call. "Yeah, Boss. Right here, Boss," Tony sputtered, watching Ziva step back into the bathroom. In his exasperation, he flopped onto her bed, his legs draped over the side.

"Got a dead Marine, this side of the CBBT," Gibbs said.

Rubbing his aching eyes, Tony asked, "In the tunnel, Boss?"

"No, over it," Gibbs said, frustrated by such a confounding question.

"Good point," Tony conceded.

"McGee and I are leaving now. You on your way in, or you gonna meet us there?"

"I'm, uh, I'm at the hospital," Tony said, and then added for Ziva's benefit and as a code for Gibbs, "Ziva's being released either today or tomorrow. So, ya know, we got that going for us."

"Still haven't told her yet?" Gibbs asked, knowing full well what Tony's answer would be.

"Exactly!" Tony said, a little too enthusiastically.

"Well, it's gonna have to wait," Gibbs told him. "I need you out there."

"On it, Boss," Tony said, ending the call. His hands dropped down to his side, and he took a deep breath. What the hell was he going to do?

"New case?" Ziva asked, returning from the bathroom.

"Yup," he said, staring at the ceiling for answer that he knew he wouldn't find there.

"Marine or Navy?" she asked.

"Marine."

"Be careful out there," she said, insinuating herself to stand between his knees.

Tony propped himself up on his elbows and took in the sight of her. The corner of his lip curled and his eyes narrowed. Ziva leaned over him, her hands astride Tony's prone body. Her heated gaze trailed over his face, and Tony came up with any number of lascivious comments. After all, he loved the flirt, and nobody did it better than Ziva. Hers was not a "come-hither" expression, but a "I am here" mien that was both enticing and intimidating. His lips parted; he nipped at the tip of his tongue; one brow popped. Why would he want to ruin this?

But Gibbs words came to him: _"You might as well clean house if you're gonna play house."_

Fueling a non-existent fire-it was cheap at best, cruel at worst. So, he laughed, and she laughed too, at a moment that had been seconds away from careening over the edge. "I gotta go," he said, enjoying the feel of the heat from her body so close to his.

"Gibbs will be waiting," she said, offering him her hands to hoist him up.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, with Ziva's hands draped across his shoulders, Tony's gut ached. He looped his arms over hers and just looked at her. No more games; no more teasing. This, he thought, was as good as it was ever going to get, and the loss of it, the eventual chasm of this bond filled him with a sorrow he could not and would not express.

"Wish you were going with me," Tony said, lifting her hands from his shoulders and propelling himself from the bed. "Text me when you hear anything."

"I will," she said, knowing full well the priority of a new case "Play nice with McGee."

"When am I not nice?" he said, throwing on his jacket.

"Tony," she said, more insistently, grasping hold of the opening to his jacket, bashful suddenly about what she was to say. "I remember what it can be like out there. Be. Safe."

_It's nice to have someone care_, he thought. _At least this is the same_. Tony smiled and kissed her forehead. "I'll be fine," he said. "I promise."

Then he was on his way, maybe reluctantly. Maybe a little too thankfully. Either way, it was another opportunity missed.

He was running out of time. And if he wasn't careful, they'd all be dead by the fifth act. Nah, he thought. Gibbs would kill him first...


	8. Chapter 8

Only one more after this. Thank you all for your continued support of this story.

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**There are cases that creep along, undulating and twisting**, forcing you to question fate, karma, black cats and cracks in the sidewalk. They test your investigative abilities, your resolve as a member of the human race, and your endurance, and until they are closed, your focus becomes singular. The rest of your world simply goes on, a machine of the living. Decisions are made without you; choices are evaluated without your input. And when you are able to break away from that myopic life to rejoin the continuum of all the others, things have changed, and you accept those changes or you don't. Doesn't matter. You weren't there.

Takes away a lot of pressure.

What Tony would have given for this case to have been one of those.

Instead, within three hours of meeting Gibbs and McGee at the crime scene, they had a suspect, a voluntarily given confession, the murder weapon and corroborating witnesses. The local LEOs took the shooter, and Gibbs' team took the rest. Done.

Back at the Navy Yard, reports were written up, piquant comments were made, boxed dinners were eaten, and by six o'clock that night they had called it a day.

By ten, with half the lights dimmed to conserve energy, only a skeleton team was left, a few janitors, and Tony. The span of windows that opened to the DC sky beckoned him.

Plumes of smoke and steam billowed above silhouetted buildings, and the deepening sky was plum-colored and bruised with darkness. Ensconced within the quiet of the base, one could almost forget that a half million people went about the business of living out there.

Almost.

Every twenty minutes or so, Tony checked his phone to see if the news had changed- "Tomorrow morning. Perhaps 10-ish?" And then he'd check his watch to count down the remaining hours before he'd be forced to tell her.

The soft, white twinkle of building lights. Radio towers that blinked red. The ochre haze that hovered above the city. And the quiet. Contemplative.

Then there was that damn Shirelles' song looping in his head. He had always considered it a catchy little tune, one that he'd used on a few occasions to tease his dates. Coy pillow talk from the DiNozzo playbook. However, standing alone at the window thinking of nothing and no one but Ziva, the sadness of the lyrics, so sugar coated by its two-and-three-four rhythm and its violin glissandos, became unmasked. "But will my heart be broken when the night meets the morning sun? I'd like to know that your love is love I can be sure of. So tell me now, and I won't ask again-Will you still love me tomorrow?"

Janitors somehow know not to vacuum a room occupied by a man standing silently at a window. There are other rooms to be cleaned. _He can't stay there all night, can he?_

It was cowardice. Plain and simple cowardice. The rationale "keep her calm" continued to scratch against Tony's conscience. As if Ziva were some damsel, some fragile young thing who had to be protected. Bette Davis in "Dark Victories."

But, it wasn't 1939, and Ziva, of all people, did not need protecting.

The muffled boom of jet turbines, and the growl of diesel engines. Car tires on grooved pavement that hummed like Detroit Angels, all discordant with deviations in speed.

And where, when he did go to her in the morning, where would he take her? Her apartment? His? What had her mind conjured up when she spoke of home?

Ziva had asked how the case was going sometime during the early afternoon, and he had texted back "Slow. TTYL." It had been slow. And boring. And not the least bit time consuming, a commodity he had presently craved. Busy meant back burner; meant didn't have to think about it; meant let someone else make the decision; meant maybe we'll all go blithely on.

When she texted "Will I see you tonight?" around nine, he didn't lie to her-"Probably not." She knew how cases played out. He counted on that kind of plausible deniability.

What were his options? Tell her, and from there the reaction branched off. Either she'd laugh it off, embarrassed, or she'd strangle him with an IV tube. Don't tell her, and that too split. Everyday for the next thirty to forty years he'd pretend that a marriage had occurred. Sure, there was the problem of falsifying tax statements and address labels. And, of course, all the people around them would have to sign off on the complicity. Minor details. Or, he could let the truth come to her, as it surely would. How could _that_ possibly go wrong?...

Either way, his happiness, his utter joy to be open and honest about his feelings for this woman were about to crumble. At his feet, there would be the ruins of what could have been. What should have been. What will never be, and he ached.

She would never forgive him for allowing this to continue. Never. Too full of pride, of past heartbreaks. She was damaged goods, and so was he, and maybe together they made a whole, but now?

At 1 AM, the janitor had given up on courtesy and compassion and had kindly asked Tony to step aside while he vacuumed, which he did. For a while. But the darkness compelled him.

And still the DC skyline twinkled and chuffed, and heavy clouds full of rain and ice began to descend upon the city. Now and then drops would tap the window panes, a crystal drumbeat, a lonesome cadence.

"Oh, Ziva," he whispered to the winds, "will you still love me tomorrow?"

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**She was restless. He was exhausted**. She sat on the edge of the daybed, her toes nervously tapping. He sat in the bedside chair, his woven hands cantilevered beyond him, elbows drilled into his knees.

"How long does this need to take?" she asked, rocketing to her feet.

"As long as it takes," he said.

"I have my discharge papers, my next appointment, my schedule of medication," she said, counting off on her fingers, "my cards, and my belongings."

"Don't forget your flowers."

"Yes. And my flowers," she stated, but quickly softened. "I love my flowers. Thank you again for the lisianthus, Tony. I do not remember ever telling you about lisianthus."

It was almost comical, he thought, how fate conspired to throw them together. The day before, while waiting for his murder suspect, Tony had conducted a quick Google search on Israeli flowers, and a DC florist was able to have a bouquet delivered within the hour. That he had haphazardly chosen the one flower in the perfect shade of purple that had grown around Ziva's childhood home was remarkable, in a Billy Wilder sort of way.

The flowers were meant to be a celebratory present in lieu of his actual presence. The damn card should have read "Glad you're going home! Sorry I can't be there with you! Gotta kinda have a little 'Me' time before my world falls apart. Love, Tony."

The clock had run out; it had to be now.

"Ziva," he said, and the abrupt tone of his voice surprised even him.

"Yes?"

"When I take you home-"

"Who's ready to go home?" her surgeon said, whisking into the room.

Score another point for fate...

An hour later, they were walking into her apartment, and Ziva was tired but beaming. She sauntered through her home with an armful of delicate purple flowers, looking for the right spot to place them, and Tony followed behind, her bag in his hand. She decided on the bedside table near the window where they could get as much sun as possible and where she would see them when she woke up.

"McGee and Abby will be here soon," Tony said.

"I look forward to that," she said, running the pads of her fingers over the supple petals. Tony dropped her belongings next to the bed and helped her take off her coat.

Ziva turned to thank him. It might have been her excitement at being home; it might have been her own fatigue, but how had she not seen the weight in his movements? How had she missed his haggard expression, his dark eyes and unshaven face? The case, she resolved, had been the culprit, but there was more. He was quiet and careful, which was not Tony, and so she grabbed his hand, and said, "I am home, Tony. It is over. Come, lay down with me."

He liked seeing his hand in hers. He liked the feel of it. So, he kept on looking at their union because if he looked up into her obsidian eyes, he'd find a reason to not tell her. If he looked at her, he'd go to her bed, form his body to hers, and if he did that, he'd fall into the trap that maybe this could all work out. So he watched their fingers blend together, moving effortlessly against the others.

"Not right now," he said. "Ziva, where am I in this room?"

Ziva's brow gathered, taken aback, and she laughed, "Of course, you are here. Where else would you be?"

It wasn't the answer he hoped she'd come to. He'd hoped she would have looked around and noticed that there was no evidence of his life in the room. No clothes, no shaving items, no pictures. In a late-night, desperate plan to continue the charade, Tony had thought about dressing the room. Sprinkle his belongings through the apartment so she'd walk into the makings of her own delusions, and not be shocked to immediately learn that she'd conjured it all up in her mind. At least, that's how he had rationalized his plans. For her benefit...

But, of course, his plans were as consequential to it all as their wedding vows had been.

So he wedged a falsified chuckle from his gullet-she'd expect that-and tried a different angle. "I'm trying to, ya know, help you acclimate yourself to the surroundings. It's been a while since you've been home."

"I have not forgotten our home, Tony, if that is what you mean."

"Our home," he whispered, brushing his thumb over her soft hand. "Do me a favor, a little trick I learned from Dr. Kate's Sister," Tony said.

Ziva eyed him sidelong for a moment, then said with a laugh, "You will not blame me if I think you have ulterior motives."

"No other motives than helping you feel more at home," he said, hardly able to bring any lightness into his voice. "Close your eyes."

"This does not bode well," she said, still chuckling. "Fine." The corner of her mouth tucked into a mischievous grin before she closed her eyes.

His gut churned at that, knowing that the next time she'd open her eyes, that smile would be gone, and he had no reason to believe he'd ever be graced by it again.

"I am ready," she said. "Now what?"

"I'm going to ask you some questions," he said. "Kind of like placing you at the scene of the crime. Without the crime, of course."

"I understand."

"Okay, where's the bathroom?" Ziva pointed to the left, and Tony said, "Good. Ready for a more difficult one?"

"Slap me."

"Hit me," he corrected. "How many drawers on the dresser?"

"Ooh, that is more difficult," she said, pursing her lips. Her fingers blindly pointed to each drawer, and she confidently announced, "Six."

Tony had to turn around to count them, but assured her she was correct. The longer he could keep this going, the longer he could hold her hand. Maybe he could hold her hand through the next ten years, if he had enough banal questions. It was worth a try. "Back to the easier questions. Who's the most handsome man in the room?"

"When did Gibbs get here?" Ziva teased, and Tony laughed. Just another thing he'd miss...

"Nice. Well played, there, Agent David," he said. "Yeah. Okay, so far you're two for three. Bonus round: What color are my eyes?"

She smiled at that, and said, "Green."

"Good," he said, and took a deep breath. There would not be ten years of her hand in his. Not ten days-he'd already had that, and the memory of those days made his next question all the worse. _Here's where it all ends,_ he thought. "Where do I live?"

"You live in Adams Morgan."

A fist of a knot clenched in his throat. He nodded. He was glad her eyes were still closed. Didn't want her to see how he was eroding.

But she did open her eyes, wide and scared. She searched his narrowed, downcast eyes for clarity and found none. "You live in Adams Morgan."

Tony swallowed hard, and forced out, "That's right."

Bees exploding from a disturbed nest, memories and realities careened against each other, all tumbling around her mind. "You do not live here."

There was still time to stop this, to continue the fantasy. But, no. He shook his head, ordered himself to do the right thing-_look at her when you're breaking her heart!_-and said, "No, I don't live here. I never have."

She felt dizzy, sick, but still she locked eyes with him. "I don't understand."

It was too painful seeing her fear, so Tony averted his eyes. He sucked in a tight breath, where it lodged in this throat. He tried to speak, but what could he say? His lips moved; his eyes blinked. Air exploded from him, and he said, "You always told me my...sense of humor would be the end of me. That one day it'd bite me in the ass. Well, it did." Tony scrubbed a hand over his aching brow, bit down so hard on his emotions that his molars threatened to crack. "The morning of your accident, I drove you to the hospital. I was joking around, saying you were having our baby, that if it was a boy, we'd name him Anthony, and if it was a girl, we'd name her Antoinette. We were laughing about how the nursery would be decorated with old movie posters. We were laughing. Well, I laughed. You were...drifting. Next thing I knew, you were in a coma." He could see her searching through her memory for this, how the line of her mouth tightened, how her brow tented. "Two weeks later, you woke up."

"What are you talking about?" she implored.

For Tony, this was the worst of it-his own culpability. From the inside out, he was beginning to fall apart. No. He wouldn't do that. That was selfish. He'd been selfish long enough. So, he pressed back his shoulders, looked her straight in the eye, like a man should do, and hoped she wouldn't see through his facade, one that only thinly disguised his trembling soul. "Ziva, I think I put that in your head. The idea that we... I think that's my fault."

"So, this was..." she started as she pinched her eyes shut, "this-thinking we are..._were_ married has been a mistake?"

"No," Tony told her, chafing at the word. Paralyzed by self-defensive stoicism, Tony did not move, but he would not let her abuse herself. "No, not a mistake. A dream."

"Words, Tony," Ziva said to him, pelting him with a look that said he should not play such games. Not now. "A mistake, a dream-either way, I have been living a lie." When he remained motionless, when his heavy eyes and contracting jaws told her the rest of the journey toward the truth would necessarily be up to her, Ziva turned from him. There needed to be space between them, to breathe, to think. She moved to her dresser, placed her hands on its wooden top and forced herself just to be calm, a Herculean effort, when she felt boneless, held up by a million tiny electrical shocks.

"I do not know what to believe," she said, inspecting her own reflection in the mirror, finding equal parts sorrow and humiliation. "It was so real to me."

"I know."

"There was no reason to question it. I..." she said, lost in the tidal force of verisimilitude. And then her focus found his in the mirror, and it tore at him how lost, how shattered she looked. Still, he held back from her, when all he wanted to do was fly to her side, soothe her, like he had for all those weeks. She beseeched him with her troubled eyes, saying, "What else do I not know?"

"Ask me anything."

Of all the questions swirling inside her mind, two seemed to cause the most pain, so she locked her tearful eyes on his, and asked, "Do I love you?"

Tony sealed shut his lips, muting a cry perched in his throat.

"Tony. Do I love you?" she asked again.

"I don't know," he whispered, because that had been his greatest fear, and he supposed he had been too afraid to ask. "I'd like to think you do, but I can't be sure."

"Do..." she began, but these were the hardest words. Her chin quaked, and he could scarcely breathe. When she finally spoke, it was not her voice. It was a voice he had never heard before-afraid and small. "Do you love me?"

"Oh, yeah," he told her, and found his carefully constructed yet timorous stoicism slipping. The sight of her wavered through tears he would not let fall. He would show her that much respect, at least. "Oh, yeah. Since the day I met you. Well, not that first day. Kate was dead and Ari was out to kill Gibbs, but soon. And every day since. Yeah, I love you, Ziva. Always will." _Please hear that_, he prayed, a silent, desperate plea.

She closed her eyes and tears streaked across her skin. "I feel so foolish."

"No, no," he said, unable to stand by any longer. He rushed to her, his arms cloaking her. He kissed hair, and he watched her in the mirror, to bear witness, as he knew he ought, to her suffering.

Her body shook with tears, and he held her tight, pressing his face to her warm neck, feeling her skin, her pulse.

And then he was tumbling back, holding his jaw. And she cocked back again. Tony threw out his hand to shield himself, but her fist screamed through the air, and then he was on his knee, and his head was swimming and dull, and she hit him again, and he tasted blood.

"Stop it," he tried to say.

"And you let me believe it!" he heard her scream somewhere above him.

"Stop it," he said again, scrambling to regain his bearings. The room pulsed, but he lifted himself. "Just stop it."

"Why? You do not wish to be hurt?" she cried, spitting and black with retribution. A bullet of a fist sliced through the air, grazing his head. "You do NOT get to choose! Just like I did not choose!" Again she flung her hand toward him, but it was caught in his steal grip.

"Stop it!" he demanded, ducking and capturing a second fist launched toward him. "Dammit, Ziva, stop!"

"Why?" she demanded, pinned down, seismic with fury and sorrow. "Why should I stop? Do you not deserve this pain?"

"Yes! Yes, I do!" he growled, bearing his blood-covered teeth. He contained her and forced her to listen to his words. "I deserve every bit of it, but you can't do this! You'll hurt yourself!"

"Now you care? Now you are concerned for me?" she bit back, wrestling to be released from his hold. "Where was that concern when I woke up thinking we were married?"

"I was right there!" he cried, throwing himself back from her, guarding himself from further attack. "I was! And we'll talk about it, I promise, but right now," he said, and breathed, hoping she'd do the same. "Right now, you have to calm down. You're still healing."

Her hand flew out, one finger pointing decisively at him. Flooded eyes lacerated him with their pain and frenzied acrimony. "Get. Out. Get out!"

"Ziva-"

"Now!" she screamed, clamping her head between her hands.

He ran from the room, hoping his absence would calm her. He stumbled into the kitchen and threw water on his face. Panting for air, he pressed a handful of paper towels to his split lip, to his bleeding nose. He washed out his mouth the best he could, and the basin ran pink with his blood.

And from her room, silence, which disquieted him further. Still shaking from the attack, but more so from the ruin of their lives-apart, together-Tony pressed against the wall and hoped she wouldn't hear his own tears. He slapped a hand to his eyes, bruised and just starting to swell.

"Ziva? Tony?"

Tony's hand fell to his side. "Great," he said, and he leaned over the sink once more, hiding his sorrow from them. He held the crimson-stained towel to his nose, and threw a handful of water on his lip.

"I hear the water," Tim's voice said. "I think they're in here." Rounding the corner into the small kitchen, their happy faces changed the moment Abby and Tim saw Tony. They stared at him, mouths agape, until their better senses kicked in.

"Oh, my god, Tony!" Abby said, making him stand up so she could assess his injuries.

"I'm fine," he said, though his head pounded and his stomach roiled.

"You told her," Tim said, taking in the lip that still dribbled blood, distended and raw, and the nose that continued to bleed. Tony's incredulity was all the conformation Tim needed, and so he scowled, not knowing who deserved his pity more. "Well, you need to sit down," he said, ushering Tony to a chair.

Abby ripped a dishtowel from the counter, a handful of ice from the freezer, and made a compress. She peeled Tony's hand from his face and replaced it with the ice pack. She tried to give him a reassuring smile, but it didn't help. "I'm gonna go check on Ziva," she told him.

"Good idea," he whispered.

Tim sat across from him, watching his friend, whose head slung back, one hand holding a towel to his nose, the other holding ice to his lip. "You wanna-"

"Not now, McGee," Tony said.

There was rustling in the bedroom, but neither men decided to check. Abby had a way with Ziva. She'd know what to say, or how to just look at her. Tim felt entirely inadequate in that department. What could he say to his friend, who sat adjacent to him, shaking his head, some inner monologue playing out within his mind?

"Tony," Tim said. He had to say something...

Tony sat up, pulled the towel from his nose and saw the bleeding had been stanched. He balled up the paper towel and threw it toward the garbage can. Handing the ice pack to Tim, Tony said, "Tell Abby thanks." He stood up with a groan, his eyes screwed shut.

"Ton, you should probably sit down," Tim said.

"I should probably get out of here," Tony said. He moved from the kitchen to the door, holding himself up along tables, backs of chairs, ledges. Once near the front door, he caught an image of himself in a framed photo of Ziva as a child. _I'm sorry, Zi_, he thought, touching his swollen lip.

A glint of gold drew his attention, and it felt like the final, defining blow. He reached up, unclasped the necklace he had been wearing for nearly a month, and pooled it on the top of her side table.

His hand trembled as he reached for the doorknob. "Take care of her," he said without looking back at Tim.

"We will," McGee told his friend, watching the door close behind him.


	9. Chapter 9

I'd like to say I waited so long to post this final chapter so that I could post it the day before Valentine's Day, but the truth is I just kind of got lazy.

Hope you like it. Thank you for supporting this story. I'm sad it's over.

**This was a coma.**

People moved about him, around him, by him. His movement were minimally reactive and autonomic. Survival instincts, not much more.

Friends put food in front of him, but he didn't remember eating. He drank, but wasn't thirsty.

He'd been involved in conversations, but had no recollection of his contributions.

When the team migrated between locations, he went with them, more a product of drafting or being pulled by their wake than his own volition.

In the silence of the night, he'd stir with a remembrance of something warm, like sunshine, like brandy. His hand would reach out for that part of him which was missing. He did not leave his bed, nor did he excavate the memory from its soporific layers. He would slide back into sleep, a phlegmatic thing to do when his life was in stagnation.

It was all dull. It was all muted. Numb.

Those around him were patient, caring for him, keeping him apprised of "the situation," giving him updates on "her condition." They catered to him- "Can I get you anything?"-squeezed his shoulders- "How ya doin', DiNozzo?"-But even so, their patience was wearing thin.

Coma has a way of eroding the spirit of everyone involved.

_Give it a few weeks_, he wanted to tell them. _It only gets worse.._.

Abby hated divorce. It was hard on the divorcees, harder still on the kids. It was even hard on the friends because inevitably they had to choose between the husband and the wife. To try to retain both friendships generally ended up making the friend a telegraph line of hate and conspiracy.

If anyone could do it, Abby was determined it would be her. At work, she tried to cheer Tony without divulging any of Ziva's secrets; at night, she listened to Ziva's anger, both at her recovery and at Tony, without burdening her further with Tony's stoic, yet visible pain.

Even still, be it the constancy of being pulled from here to there, and back to here, Abby was growing tired of maintaining an equilibrium for those who most surely had toppled over the edge.

"You're going back to work part time next week," Abby reminded Ziva one evening over carryout Thai food. "You'll have to see Tony then."

"Then I will see him when I see him," Ziva flatly remarked, popping a peanut into her mouth.

"Yeah, but," Abby said, stirring her noodles with her chopsticks, "wouldn't it be easier to, like, break the ice, as it were. You know-get all the awkward out before it gets too, um, awkward?"

"There is nothing awkward," she said. Ziva pushed her plate away, dabbed at her lips with a napkin.

"I bet he'd like to see you," Abby told her, trying to press the subject without forcing the fact down Ziva's throat that this ice-out had gone on too long. "I think he really, really misses you."

"Yes, well," Ziva said, unwinding her legs from beneath her to carry her plate to the kitchen. She hoped Abby would take her unspoken words for what they were, that she did not wish to even think about Tony DiNozzo.

Abby, however, would not be so easily curtailed. She believed in the gentle, the quiet, and above all else the preservation of dignity. She also believed that a first meeting, post-volcanic disruption, at work, in the middle of the squad room, was the perfect way to completely sever whatever was left of Tony and Ziva's relationship. No. She wouldn't let that happen. It was time to heal, gently, quietly and with dignity.

"Hey, Ziva," she began, sliding her plate onto the counter with as little noise as possible, lest it rattle the relative calm in Ziva's demeanor, "don't ya think it's time you, um, kind of...well, thought about forgiving Tony?"

"There is nothing to forgive," Ziva said, rinsing off her plate.

"Oh," Abby said, her eyes blinking in surprise.

"Abby," Ziva began, smoothing out her hands, displaying her precarious grip on placidity, "I know what you are trying to do. It is...kind. Misguided, but kind. What is done is done. It is time for me to move on."

"Well, good. So, then you're not angry with him?"

"Why should I be angry?" Ziva asked, not even attempting to hide the sarcasm in her voice. She jammed one plate and then the next into the dishwasher racks, and Abby winced. "It is part of his DNA, this inclination of his to lie to me."

"You don't mean that," Ziva said, shaking her head. "Tony would never-"

"Lie to me? Hmm? I am beginning to wonder if he has ever told me the truth. About anything!" Ziva slammed shut the dishwasher, and Abby jumped back. Grabbing the edge of the counter, Ziva closed her eyes and tried to calm herself. "Abby. I know you think this is helping, but... I do not wish to discuss it."

"Okay, don't hate me," she said, twisting the end of one ponytail, "but I think we really need to."

"Then you are wrong," Ziva said, trying to move past Abby, but the woman suddenly became a wall, her long arm span barricading the way.

"I have listened to everything you've had to say about Tony for the last two weeks, some of which is true, and some of which is, like, total BS."

"I am sorry you feel that way."

"So," Abby continued, "I think it's only fair that you now listen to me."

Ziva let loose a dark, humorless guffaw and again tried to slide by her unmovable friend. "I do not wish to hear-"

"Well, I you're gonna hear it!" Abby asserted, her tight fists bolted to her hips. Taken aback by Abby's uncharacteristic aggression, Ziva stood nonplussed. "Number one: Tony did not lie to you!"

Ziva gasped, her eyes large with incredulity and ire. "Of course he did, when he let me believe we were married!"

"That, Ziva, was not a lie!" Abby pointed out with her words and one firmly pointed finger. "That was protection."

Ziva huffed, and said, "Protection. I do not need...protection. Least of all the protection offered by Tony."

"Number two: Tony only realized you thought you were married a couple days before you left the hospital," Abby reminded her, and when Ziva tried to interject, Abby stopped her with a stomp of her booted foot. "No! Let me finish! And if you think about it, even if he _did_ keep the truth from you-"

"Ha! So you agree he lied!"

"Even if he _DID_ keep the truth from you, he did it out of love!"

Ziva crowed out loud at that. "Love like this, I do not need!"

"Yes, you do!" Abby cried, her pony tails flailing next to her red face. "You need love like that! You need Tony's love!"

"Why? Why do I need a love like that? One based in lies and deception!" Ziva spat out. "Is my self-worth that...diminished that I can only be loved by a man who would let me live a lie just so he could continue to play-out his...his adolescent fantasy of being a loving husband?"

"You keep missing the point! God!"

Ziva threw her hands in the air, and yelled, "Then what is the point?"

"That he could have let you go on believing you were married!"

"He DID let me go on believing that!"

"Oh, my god!" Abby growled, grabbing hold of the sides of her head, digging her black nails into her scalp. "Have you lost your mind?"

"Yes!" Ziva barked, glaring at Abby. "A little, yes!"

Abby stared at Ziva, undone by her own anger and frustration. She tossed her hands in front of her and stomped away. "You are the most stubborn, ungrateful, hard-headed-"

"Apparently, not hard-headed enough," Ziva called back.

Abby spun around at that, pinched her eyes down and pointed hard at Ziva. "Hard-hearted, unforgiving, stubborn-"

"You have already said that!" Ziva yelled back at her.

"Well, I'll say it again, 'cause obviously you're not hearing it!" Abby shot back at her. "You are stubborn, Ziva David! Tony loves you, and you're too stubborn to realize how hard it was for him!"

"I am the one with the brain injury!" Ziva countered. "You cannot possibly equate what Tony might have endured to what I have endured!"

"You were in a coma! YOU don't even know what YOU endured!" Abby growled. "But Tony knows! For two weeks he stayed by your side. He talked himself hoarse all those days, and he never, NEVER left you. And he didn't do that, Ziva, because he was lying to you. He did it because he wanted to be there. Because that's what he does! He stays!" Ziva opened her mouth to speak, and Abby clapped her hands over her ears and crushed her eyes shut. "No! I'm talking! You have to listen to me, Ziva! And then when I'm done, then you can talk. Or kill me. Whichever, but for now, just listen to me!" Shocked, Ziva backed down. "You're right, Tony didn't tell you the truth, but that's not the same as lying. It's not! He kept the truth from you to let you heal! He hated not telling you the truth!" There was no stopping Abby, and Ziva braced herself against the gale-force of Abby's words. "My god, Ziva! He pulled you out of Somalia AND a coma! What more does he have to do to prove how much he loves you?"

Ziva could hardly breathe, so undone by Abby's caustic, cutting words. And when she saw the bloom of shame on Ziva's cheek, Abby transformed from a bellowing, gesticulating force to the source of compassion and maternal goodness they all relied upon.

"God, Ziva, I'm sorry I had to be so harsh," she said, descending upon Ziva with arms stretched wide.

But Ziva sidestepped Abby's advances. Held out her hand to tell Abby to wait before saying another word, or moving, or even looking at her as she was. She went to her room, threw on a pair of shoes, grabbed her coat, her phone and her purse.

"Where are you going?" Abby asked.

Ziva pulled on her coat, shook her head, and said, "I am not sure."

"Do you want me to-I don't know-drive you there?"

She opened her mouth to speak, but Ziva had no idea what to say. "I need to think, Abby."

"Okay," Abby said, biting her lip. "You'll call when you figure out where you're going, right?"

Ziva smiled, touched Abby's hand, and walked into the night.

NCISNCISNCISNCISNCISNCIS

Writing up personnel evaluations was almost as bad as sitting through marriage counseling, Gibbs thought. He always evaluated his team on the spot, not months later. Like marriage counseling, it was a waste of time to dredge up things that had gone wrong in the past. It was a damn inconvenience to quantify and qualify how he "felt" about his people. Hell, they knew how he felt, and if their "relationship" wasn't working, evaluating it wasn't going to help.

So it was with a kind of joy (or as close to joy as LJ Gibbs could muster) that he swung his truck into the driveway of his suburban home.

Until he saw two small feet awaiting him at the base of his front stoop.

They were quite a pair, Tony and Ziva, Gibbs thought. For all their manufactured bluster and, at times, marrow-deep acrimony, they functioned best together. How often had he seen their tandem lives carry on through the good and bad, as long as they were a team? How often had they refused to acknowledge their need for each other, only to be tripped up by their own stubbornness or pain?

And during those dark days, they'd always drop in, like shoes dropping to the floor after a long day. First one, then the other. Sometimes the other shoe took a little longer to come undone, but it, too, would drop.

Sitting on his front stoop was the other shoe. He almost felt sorry for them.

Rounding the side of the hedges where Ziva sat like a single book between massive bookends, Gibbs slid by her, saying, "You coulda gone inside. Didn't have to wait out here in the cold."

"I really didn't mind," Ziva said. "I needed a bit of fresh air." When Gibbs stopped from pulling his mail from the box and looked down on Ziva, she went on. "Abby and I had words. Well, Abby had words. I had to listen. And now, I suppose, I am feeling rather...sheepish, yes?"

"If she did her job right, yup," Gibbs said, shoving the mail under his arm.

With the front door open, and Gibbs on the other side holding it for her, Ziva pushed up from the cold concrete steps and padded her way into his home. Lights were flicked on, keys and the mail were tossed to the side table, the door clicked softly behind her, and Ziva waited, her hands held tight in her coat pocket and her breath in her lungs, for Gibbs to welcome her into his home.

For his part, Gibbs unclipped his gun and his badge, and realized Ziva hadn't moved from the vestibule. He stopped, glanced her way, and said, "Want a cup of coffee?"

"No," she said, examining her shoes for no other reason than they weren't his eyes. "Thank you, though."

It annoyed him that some of those people who ought to know best that they were always welcome in his house didn't believe it, or continued to await his formal invitation. His inclination was to snap at her, ask her what the hell she was waiting for? But, the fact that she was in his living room, wearing what could only be described as a desperate pair of decades-old jeans, told him to bite his tongue.

"I got a steak I could throw on the grill," he said, placing his sidearm and his badge in the small shelf safe.

"I am not hungry," she said.

"You won't mind if I eat then?" he asked.

"No. Please, go ahead."

"Then," he said, ambling toward the dark kitchen, "come on. Not gonna talk to you between rooms."

That was all she needed, his approval to enter his home. She wasn't at all sure what she was going to say to him, but she was sure it, whatever it was, had to be said. There was a gnawing ache inside her, nameless and keening. She was hoping Gibbs, with his diving rod of intuition, would be able to suss out that ache, and then, perhaps, then she could go on.

Folding herself into one of the turquoise vinyl chairs of the forty-year-old dinette set, Ziva watched as Gibbs went about his dinner preparation-two hotdogs from the refrigerator, which he smelled for freshness, wrapped in pieces of bread and tossed in the microwave. Thirty seconds later, they were slathered with ketchup. Twenty seconds after that, half of one was already gone.

Mid-chew, Gibbs looked up to find Ziva watching him with humored disgust, and said, pushing the food to the corner of his mouth, "You want one?"

"No," Ziva said. "No. Not even if it were the last meal on earth. But, thank you."

"Suit yourself," he said, retrieving two beers from the refrigerator. Taking a seat kitty-corner from her, Gibbs offered Ziva one of the bottles.

"I cannot, not yet," she said, tapping the side of her head. "But, in a few weeks, I might take you up on the offer."

Gibbs nodded, opened one of the bottles, and took a swig. And while he finished his dog and the first beer, he watched her, silent and troubled, her hands pinned under her legs, her long hair shielding a portion of her face,

"What's on your mind, Ziva?" he asked, opening the second bottle.

"That is the problem," she said, tucking her hair behind her ear. "I am not sure."

"A boat without a rudder."

"Something like that, yes."

"This about you and Tony?"

The mention of his name pinched her heart. "It is..." Shaking her head, Ziva thought about what it truly was about, and the truth was difficult to voice. "It is about me." She could feel his eyes upon her, appraising her, and it would have been easier if he were angry, she thought. This was worse, this compassion in his squinted eyes, so she did not look up. Still, she needed him to hear her and hopefully help her connect better to her confusing world. "As foolish as this may sound, I think I am in mourning."

"Over what?"

Ziva shook her head. "A life I never had. Which, I realize, sounds highly melodramatic, and that is part of my..."

"Rudderlessness?"

She knew his coined word was meant to alleviate some of the pain that was clearly emanating from her soul, and so she did smile, but it lasted only a second or two. "I feel very...childish, Gibbs, mourning the loss of something that never was. I suppose I was hoping you could help me make sense of it."

Gibbs sipped his beer and considered her words. Tricky area, he thought. Consider her feelings, his team, his rules, his own insulated life. Tricky. "You came out of a coma thinking you were married to Tony."

"Yes."

Gibbs adjusted his position in his seat while he sipped his beer and thought about what he wanted to say. He lowered the bottle, and said, "The mind knows what it knows."

It was so close to what Tony had once said. So close that it felt like molten wax sluicing over her skin. "It was real to me, Gibbs. It was as real to me as...as breathing. And...and, yes, I will admit that I was happy. It, thinking I was...married to Tony, was a comfort to me. And now that I know... Now that I know the truth, I..." She would not cry. She had made a promise to herself that, yes, she would go to Gibbs, but she would not cry. So she breathed, nodded her head to affirm the promise she had made, and waited until her voice would not betray her sadness. "Now that I remember the truth, I..." But it was a futile attempt, masking her utter and unrelenting sorrow. "How can I miss what I never truly had? Why do I mourn that which I never wanted, which I never asked for?"

"Still," he said, as quiet as grief, "you mourn."

Ziva tangled her fingers together atop the table. Her brow knotted, and, yet, she would not cry. "The lives we lead... Perhaps we are not afforded such luxuries. Perhaps family, companionship... Love. Perhaps I have chosen a path that is incompatible to such things."

It was a good try, he thought, narrowing his eyes. "You really believe that?"

And when she lay her sad eyes on him, and when her broken and willowy voice fell from her trembling lips, Gibbs tipped his head in sympathy. "Do I have a choice?" she asked. "Have I ever?"

There it was. Gibbs scooted his chair next to hers, wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and asked, "What is it you really want to know, Ziva?"

Her jaws were a vice torqued against her anguish. She pressed her fingers into her eyes. But when she could no longer contain her heartache, Ziva buried her face in his shoulder and wept.

NCISNCISNCISNCISNCIS

It was odd enough that McGee had asked him to go have a beer after work. Odder still that he accepted. But once at the bar, once surrounded by loud, brash business types trying to impress each other with the latest catch phrases and with supercilious appraisals of gallery openings they had not actually attended, Tony paid for his drink, clapped Tim on the shoulder, and drove home.

The irony hadn't been lost on Tony that only months earlier he had been one of those loud, brash people in a bar, but that was before...before...

Each time he tried to put words to what "before" was, Tony felt his chest tighten. So, he tried not to think about it. He had been doing a pretty good job of it, too, until he opened the door to his apartment and heard dishes clacking together.

One hand on his sidearm, Tony closed the door behind him and peered around the corner of his kitchen.

There she was, stirring a sauce pan at the stove, face to face with him for the first time in eleven days, nine hours and two bottles of Johnny Walker. When she casually looked up from her work, Ziva's black eyes were a blank canvas. Only the tight line of her lips broadcast the truer disruption within. It frightened him. And thrilled him, having her in his home.

But there were rules to this type of game, one that they had played so often. He knew he had hurt her, but he was recovering, too. Whatever would happen would happen begrudgingly. Pride and self-protection of a fragile heart, then, dictated the rules.

So he locked eyes with her for a moment, to prove that he could, blinked and looked away. Tossed the mail on the ledge. He hung up his coat, and asked, "You pick that lock?"

"No," she said, grinding pepper into the sauce. "But I could have."

"Uh-huh." Tony crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her while she chopped parsley. The audacity, he thought. God, how he missed this woman... "So. You're here."

"I am here."

"Cooking."

"It would seem so."

"What's the occasion?"

"I...felt like cooking."

"And you couldn't have done that in your own apartment?"

"No!" she said, slamming the knife onto the cutting board, and Tony quirked a smile. One point DiNozzo. Closing her eyes to diffuse her anger, Ziva splayed her fingers out across the counter and calmed herself. "No. I mean, yes, I could have, but I decided to come here."

"Uh-huh." Tony sauntered into his bedroom where he stored his gun and his badge. Loosened his tie, and hoped to god Ziva couldn't see the sweat forming on his body. He ran a shaking hand across his face and willed his heart to stop racing. Then he sauntered back into his living room. He picked up his mail and feigned interest in its contents. If she wanted to pretend this was how to pick up again, he'd let her. When the charade ended with acrimonious words and hurtful, acrid testimony about their nonexistent relationship, as he knew it would, Tony would throw this moment of his acquiescence in her face. But for now, he'd pretend.

"How've you been?" he asked, looking over his electric bill. Or maybe it was his water bill. Didn't really matter.

"I am feeling clearer every day," she said, sprinkling parsley into the sauce. "I am still dizzy, but the doctors said that is to be expected. Something about calcium crystals floating around my inner ear."

Tony folded the bill and slid it back into its envelope. "Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo."

"Yes," she said, surprised by his knowledge. "You remember."

"I remember a lot of things."

Their eyes met in a flash, and just as quickly looked away, like fingers flying from a burned down match. Her skin began to prickle, and Ziva had the need to lash out. She shook her head, wiped her hands on a dish towel, and turned to the cupboard where he kept his plates.

"How are the headaches?" he asked, blindly flipping through the pages of a magazine.

If he wanted to continue this cold, stubborn falsehood, then fine, Ziva would let him. She pulled two plates from the cupboard, and said, "Manageable."

"And the memory?" he asked, eyeing her carefully.

"If you are asking if I remember that we are not married," she said, walking the plates to his tiny dining table, "then, yes, I remember."

"Well, it was fun while it lasted."

"Was it?" she asked, her eyes afire with combustible rage.

Tony stared her down for a moment, tossed the magazine aside, and breezed by her. He ambled into the kitchen where he poured himself a drink. Ziva needed to turn down the temperature on the sauce, but she would not enter the small space while Tony was standing there. She opened her lips to speak, but thought better of it. Tony finished his drink, and grabbed two place settings of silverware. Ziva would not move, he felt sure of that, and he would not be intimidated by her anger, so he stepped just to the side of her, enough for her to feel the heat of his skin and for him to smell the spices in her hair.

While he set the silverware on the table next to the plates, Ziva stared hard at his carefully relaxed features, which further wound her tight coil. "Tell me."

"Well, the fork goes on the left side," he said, lifting one eyebrow to glance at her, which he knew would piss her off.

"No," she bit back. "Tell me why you allowed me to believe we were married?"

Tony straightened and walked away from her, deciding to put some space between him and the knives he had just placed on the table. "Tell you the truth, when you woke up, I didn't realize you thought we were married for a couple days." He poured himself another drink, drank it in one quick gulp, and then turned back to her, leaning against the edge of the counter. "When I did realize it, I was... Well, you can imagine I was a little stunned. And flattered. But mostly stunned."

"So you let me believe it because you were enjoying the farce."

Her disregard for his true reaction chewed at his ability to maintain his nonchalance. "No, because the doctors told me not to upset you, that you needed to keep your blood pressure low. They told me over time you'd remember."

"But there was a chance that I may have never remembered," she said, and when she caught him eyeing the bubbling sauce, she marched into the small kitchen, spun the knob to off, and fully faced him. One hand anchored to her hip, one to the edge of the counter, Ziva assaulted him with her dark, hooded eyes, and said, "Certainly there was a point that you had to make the choice to tell me."

"Yes, there was a point," he said, winding his arms across his chest, his ankles one over the other. He, too, narrowed his eyes, saying, "It was when I brought you home."

"What made you finally tell me the truth?"

"Why did I tell you the truth," he repeated, scratching his cheek with his hand, a carefully crafted show of indifference. "Well, that's an interesting question, Ziva. Self-preservation, really. I thought if I didn't tell you, if I let you go on believing we were in the...matrimonial way, one night you'd wake up and remember I wasn't your husband, and you'd kill me in my sleep."

"I am not allowed to carry my sidearm!"

"Then you'd kill me with your mascara brush," he snapped back, teeth bared, "but not before slicing off my other Very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo. The third!"

She charged toward Tony, stopping mere inches from him. "So, you did it out of fear!"

"No! I did it out of..." He slammed his mouth closed. Glared at her. She had gotten the best of him, and he wouldn't, couldn't allow that to happen. His jaws still impermeably fastened, Tony forced out an acerbic chuckle, a caustic smile, shook his finger at Ziva, and slid past her.

"How's your latest cat-scan?" he asked, drawing two glasses from the shelf, which he brought to the table, as if his hands weren't shaking, as if his heart wasn't pounding.

Having not moved, Ziva reached for the counter, her fingers tapping nervously on the formica top. He was right to change the subject. For now. "It is fine. I can... They say I will..." she started, but her brain injury was not the reason she came. There was a different pain that warranted her attention, and it could not begin to heal until she had some answers, so she spun around, and tried, really tried, to remain calm as she said, "I need to understand why you did what you did. Why you stayed with me." When her words had the required affect on him, his head bowed down, his hand to his brow, she went one step further. "Why you...let me love you."

Tony grabbed the back of the dining room chair and rounded out his aching shoulders. "Because you needed me."

It felt like vinegar in her mouth, these words of his, and so she demanded, "Is that the only reason?"

"Do you need another?"

"I am having a difficult time believing if any of this is true," she said, throwing her hands in the air.

"You're going to believe what you want."

"You bathed me!"

"Yeah!" he barked, and shoved the chair into the table. Dishes rattled, glasses tumbled. Suddenly upon her, his expression reflecting all those days of fear, of frustration and pain, he spat out, "Yeah, I did! I did a lot of things while you were in a coma. Saw a lot of things, things I don't particularly care to remember, but I was there. And I'd do it all again, because you had two holes drilled in your skull," he said, motioning to the side of her skull, his words clipped, "and there was nothing else I could do, so, yeah, I took you into that bathroom, and I washed your hair, and I held you when you were too dizzy to sit up straight, and I'd do it again, every day, for the rest of my life if you'd let me." He stopped then, to breathe, to realize she had been stunned into silence, but there was more. "So, there, you got it out of me, Ziva. That's the truth of my deep, dark secret. That I did it all because you needed me, and because I needed you, too. How's that for the truth?"

When she didn't offer anything in return, but stood visibly shaken, Tony pressed his advantage further. "Now let me ask you something-Why are you here? We could have had this conversation over the phone. Hell, you could have emailed me your list of questions, but you didn't. You came here. To my home. To cook for me. Why? What's your deep, dark little secret, Miss David?" he demanded, veins popping in stark relief against his ruddy skin.

"That I cannot live without you."

It was said so quietly, so devoid of anger. And upon searching her eyes, he felt certain the words surprised her as well, and had more than likely cost her dearly. The game, he realized, was over. He had won. A Pyrrhic victory.

But he would not allow her to suffer for her honesty, so he said, "Well, you could, but I wouldn't suggest it." He knew that subtle cast of her eye, the one that silently begged him to step lightly near her, to show her kindness that she wasn't sure she deserved, the one that so few people ever saw. He softened his voice and his expression, and whispered, "I need to hear you say it, Ziva."

Scanning his tired eyes, exhausted herself by the abrasion of their words, she whispered back, "I am not your wife," which pained her more than she was prepared for.

Tony brushed his fingers against her cheek, cooled her feverish skin, and said, "And I am not your husband."

They both sighed, wondering if the loss was too great to overcome.

No, she would not give up so easily. Tentative at first, her fingers fluttering over his heart before settling there, Ziva swallowed against a voice that seemed at first paralyzed. "But," she said, before the pins of tears began to obscure her vision, "even so, you love me. Right?"

Breath came to him then, as if for the first time. He breathed deep, lay his palm to her hair, and said, "Is that gonna be a problem?"

"No. No, not for me," she said, shaking her head, unable to release her hold on his eyes, sheltering and warm. "It may be for my father."

"I think they call that a value-added benefit," he chuckled, and so did she. Tony smoothed back the hair from her forehead, thumbed away a tear he knew she wished hadn't fallen, and when his hand came to cup her cheek once again, she closed her eyes and pressed into it. The poignancy of this moment, a moment he could not even bare dreaming about in her absence, drove a velvet spike into his heart. Her hand came to join his, clinging to his fingers, and he brought himself to ask the hardest question of all. "What about you? Do you love me, Ziva?"

Her eyes, bright with tears, met his, and she said, "Yes. Yes. I think it would be easier if I did not, but yes. I love you."

His arms ached with the desire to encircle her; his chest burned with the need for her body next to his, but his heart... His timid heart needed more. "How do you know?" he asked, the sight of her oscillating.

"Because with you," she whispered, her chin trembling with the fear that he might still turn away from her, "because with you I am safe. And I am home."

He nodded, and he smiled. And he sniffed back those tears. And he nodded again. Cleared his throat, and brought her hand to his lips where he kissed her warm palm. "No more pretending."

"No more pretending." Her vision trailed along his features, his creased brow, his glistening eyes, his blushing skin. "No more. It is an exhausting thing."

"Yes, it is," he whispered back.

"Tell me you love me," she begged, knotting her fingers in his shirt. "I need...I need-"

"I love you, Ziva," he said, sparing her the agony of exposing her already scoured heart. "I love you. I love you. I love-"

Then her lips were on his, her arms spooled around his neck. Shocked, Tony's eyes flew open. In the next moment, he was lost in their kiss, his hand woven into her hair, the other pulling her closer to him.

A first kiss. For the second time.

When they were dizzy for air, from the release, Tony kissed her eyes, the soft apples of her cheeks, her hair, a languid bridge of kisses across her brow.

And she laughed, waited for his lips to return to hers so she could place the words I love you directly into his mouth, onto his tongue, press it into his lips, in English, in Arabic, in Hebrew. He devoured her words of love and fed her starving mouth with the same.

"Ani L'Dodi v'Dodi Li," she whispered breathlessly, her tongue touching his on each forward syllable, and his tongue finding hers in response- "Ani ohev otakh."

She pulled away from him, panting, and rested her forehead to his lips. "When did you learn to speak Hebrew?"

"I didn't. I read to you, transliterated poems I found on the internet. I was running out of material there in the second week," he said, lifting her face to be able to gaze into her eyes. "Like I said, I remember things."

She looped her arms under his and hooked her hands to his shoulders. "Someday, you will tell me the entire story, what you did for me," she said, searching his face for answers she knew were there, and knew there would be time now to find. "Tell me this: Why? Why did you stay with me all those days?"

He found trails for his fingers that he had only once dreamed of, and said, "I didn't know where else to go, Ziva. I didn't have a choice."

"That is not true," she said, and nestled in close to him, rubbed her cheek against his unshaven face. And he closed his eyes, still quite unsure how it was that Ziva was in his arms at last, fully conscious of her actions. "We have choices. Too often we are afraid to risk taking a chance."

"So," he said, pressing kisses to the base of her neck, "what happens next?"

The soft blades of her fingers crept down the side of his spine and gathered above his hips. "So, we begin."

Tony drew back from her, framed her face with his hands, soaked in the radiance of her beauty, and asked, "Begin what?"

She searched his clear eyes, the color of spring and life, and said, "I do not know, but I do not wish to continue along another moment without you."

He kissed her supple lips again, and said, "We'll figure it out as we go."

And she wove her arms around him. "Yes, as we go."

"We."

"We."

**The End**


End file.
